Prompted by this poem: https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/poetry-180/all-poems/item/poetry-180-005/thanks/

Gratitude comes in many forms, doesn’t it? I haven’t been to war but I have had moments that are like memory tattoos. They color my skin in such a way that I don’t notice them all the time, like looking in the mirror and not seeing the dent in the tip of my nose. It has always been there, I got it from my father and when I do see it, I think of his nose and the dent in the tip of it.
Moments like having a friend, who was shoveling leaf litter off a roof, finding an almost perfect apple buried in the litter. I was below, aiming his shovel-fulls of debris into a green bin. When he found the apple, he commented on it and tossed it off the roof towards me. I could have let it fall but I reached out with my left hand and caught it and in the same movement tossed it, dead center, into the green bin. It all felt very choreographed, balletic, perfect. I was impressed with myself. But there is something otherworldly about things like that, where some mystery takes over your life and saves you, over and over. Catching the apple and tossing it into the bin didn’t save my life in the same sense that seeing the sun glinting off a sniper’s bayonet saves the life of a soldier, but the instinct is the same. As animals we are bred to survive and ‘think fast’ is one of the best tools we have.
And yet. And yet. This young man was finding this beauty in war. The glint, the glitter, the flicker of light caught his attention and he ducked or shot first or somehow, he was saved and saved again, by this unknowable insight we all have to a greater or lesser degree.
I am not a war monger. War is unbelievably horrific.

I was looking through a notepad I keep next to my desk for odd notes. Today I saw a note: 6 million missing in WWI. Not just dead but missing.

The first note on the note pad is: Drill Powered boat.
It is apparently possible to use a battery powered drill to turn a propeller fast enough to drive a small boat quickly across a lake. The charge on the battery doesn’t last very long, but I am sure there will be a $40 version of it on sale online soon. Just take a 6 pack of batteries along.

Anyhow, we all have things to be thankful for and that is the message here, so:

Thanks for all the things I did even though I was scared to do them.
No thanks for all the times I was scared for no reason.

Thanks for the imagination to see other worlds and to see the invisible in this one.
No thanks for imagining that the worst case was the only possible outcome.

Thanks for my eyes to see the splendor.
No thanks for the things I cannot unsee.

Thanks for the smell of summer evenings, heat scented trees, orange blossoms.
No thanks for the smell of a 3 day old suicide.

Thanks for the numbness to survive my childhood.
No Thanks for the numbness that has been a barrier to my life, all my life.

Thanks for the tea leaves brewing in my cup.
No thanks for the tea leaves that look like fruit flies.

Thanks for rivers and floods and deltas and rapids and just thanks for water in all its manifestations.
Thanks for deserts that are quiet.
Thanks for the sound of sand drifting down a sand dune.
Thanks for the wide silent river at flood when you can hear the pebbles and rocks of the bottom tripping downstream.

Thanks for the bones of this Earth
There is really nothing I can think of now to say No Thanks about.
Just
Thanks for it all.
Even the unreasonable
irritating
frightening
disgusting mess
of it all.
Well, there is a No Thanks lurking in the background.
No thanks for taking it all away.