In Gratitude of Hours

   In Gratitude of Hours

“My life is not this steep hour
through which you see me being swept.
I am a tree standing before my background,
of my many mouths I am but one—
the one, indeed, that’s always first to close.

 I am the space between two notes
which, if wed, ring crossly:

For the death note craves finality—

but in their dark interval the two meet,
embrace again, and tremble.

And  the
beautiful song goes on.”

                                                                          ~~~Rainer Maria Rilke

In Gratitude of Hours

How do you pen
the correct words of praise,
of gratitude?

 How is it they flow like a river
and, at times, like a salmon pushing against the current?

 When words no longer suffice,
pictures form…
sketches, paintings, portraits, landscapes—each giving gratitude to and
for You becoming new again
as in the beginning.

 Gratitude often unleashes itself
like a fountain from my Soul…
no words, simply a crescendo of
vibrational humming rising, falling, growing
louder, and then, silently filling in the
spaces before another note plays itself
from the chambers holding my lungs.

 For these hours, I give gratitude.
And yes, too, and for You…
and yes, to all sentient beings.

 Praising life even in chaos,
we evolve, becoming new.
These hours of gratitude are
no longer chains that bind…
instead, they are hands, held open,
reaching out, touching, and joining
with a soft paw, the firm bark of
an oak, the sea and its sand
coursing through my fingers.

For these hours of gratitude,
I pause…

 The soft silhouette of the fern
invites me to stay awhile.
And so, I do.

 Always gratitude in my being
that You join me here
…in these hours.

 “I am not what happened to me,
 I am what I choose to become.”

                                            ~~~Carl Jung

A note of thanks for the kind messages shared regarding The Book of Hours. Many of you have inquired how you might read The Hours again in their entirety.
Simply go to www.onesingledrop.com    Click on BLOG and scroll back to the ‘beginning’ of The Book of Hours.
The penned words and photos were birthed during the height of  the pandemic and found their way to my 2022 website and are now concluded.