Poem for Thanksgiving

(“thank you” seals available from K is for Calligraphy on Etsy)

Thanks
by W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

(from The Rain in the Trees, 1988)

I first read this poem as the epigraph to Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, and since then I’ve come back to it again and again. It captures so perfectly the practice of gratitude in an often dark world, where evil and good, darkness and light, heartbreak and hope, live side by side and (this is key) don’t always cancel one another out.

I also love the poem’s rhythm, the refrain of “thank yous” and the way it builds and builds in a mighty wave. And the last lines send chills down my spine every. single. time.

I’m saying thank you perhaps more than usual this week – it is Thanksgiving week, after all – but in some way or another, perhaps especially when confronted with darkness, I am always saying thank you.

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