So much to be thankful for!

This morning I woke up on the hilltop (house/dog/cat sitting) to a perfectly outrageous sunrise. Outside the wind was blowing and at 6 in the morning one of the churches was loud with singing (good music! happy music!), which was weirdly wonderful as the sun crested the horizon.

For some reason, the one thought clear in my head this morning was Walt Whitman. Now, I confess, I don't often think of Mr. Whitman (I'm more prone to associate the name with chocolate - the ones my sister would prod and poke and leave if not filled with her desired choice) and I have no idea why he was in my mind, but to honor that thought, here is a poem he wrote that seems right for this morning. Thanksgiving is, of course, an American holiday, full of myth and untruths, but it remains my favorite holiday because what's not to like about being thankful? And I am often overflowing with thanks, because after all, I am the Luckiest Woman in the World. America is in another wrenching convolution of its existence, in my opinion. Yet, I am thankful. Traveling its width this summer I fell back in love with the sheer beauty of the country I was born in. So take a good look around you today...it all passes away eventually, but we do have now. Thankfully.


Unnamed Land by Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

---

Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten
thousand years before these States,
Garner'd clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and
travel'd their course and pass'd on,
What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes
and nomads,
What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others,
What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,
What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology,
What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of death
and the soul,
Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish and
undevelop'd,
Not a mark, not a record remains--and yet all remains.
O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more
than we are for nothing,
I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much
as we now belong to it.
Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,
Some with oval countenances learn'd and calm,
Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects,
Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,
Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,
laboring, reaping, filling barns,
Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,
libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.
Are those billions of men really gone?
Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?
Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?
Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves?
I believe of all those men and women that fill'd the unnamed lands,
every one exists this hour here or elsewhere, invisible to us.
In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of
what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in life.
I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person of
them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;
Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products,
games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,
I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,
counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,
I suspect I shall meet them there,
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.

p.s. A big thankfulness from me for all who read this blog and support me with encouragement, new ideas, and thoughtful comments via the written word and / or seeing you in person, strangers and friends. And strangers who become friends  (yes, yes, and for all my friends who are just strange...hush now!)