Dear Annie 11/24

Dear Readers: Wishing you all a very happy, healthy and joyous Thanksgiving. As we gather around the table, it is a good time to reflect on all the things that we can be thankful for. It is a time to appreciate what you have and treasure the very moments that you are spending with friends or family. Below are some of my favorite poems about gratitude. I hope you enjoy them!

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Wear gratitude like a cloak, and it will feed every corner of your life.” – Rumi

“The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.” – William Blake

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” – Ernest Hemingway, “The Old Man and the Sea”

“Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.” – Hansa Proverb

The Harvest Moon

“It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes

And roofs of villages, on woodland crests

And their aerial neighborhoods of nests

Deserted, on the curtained window-panes

Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes

And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!

Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,

With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!

All things are symbols: the external shows

Of Nature have their image in the mind,

As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;

The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,

Only the empty nests are left behind,

And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” – Charles Dickens

Excerpt from “As You Like It” by William Shakespeare

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.”

“One Day Is There of the Series” by Emily Dickinson

“One day is there of the series

Termed ‘Thanksgiving Day’

Celebrated part at table

Part in memory -

Neither Ancestor nor Urchin

I review the Play -

Seems it to my Hooded thinking

Reflex Holiday

Had There been no sharp subtraction

From the early Sum -

Not an acre or a Caption

Where was once a Room

Not a mention whose small Pebble

Wrinkled any Sea,

Unto such, were such Assembly,

‘Twere ‘Thanksgiving day’ – “

“Friendship IXX” by Khalil Gibran

“And a youth said, ‘Speak to us of Friendship.’

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the ‘ay.’

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.

If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”

Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@creators.com.