Frozen

It's been a crazy-busy summer and I feel like my head is still spinning after last week.  Still, we were lucky to spend a healing weekend with friends in Galena, Il.  This was our eighth year going away with these two wonderful families.  And there were moments when the temperature outside cooled my shoulders, when my feet plunged into a swimming pool sent shivers across my skin and when the sounds of our kids laughing on the grass floated up to the deck where we sat in broken, plastic chairs, caught in a brief second of perfection.

Today, a poem about being grateful.

Dusting by Marilyn Nelson

Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things.

For algae spores
and fungus spores,
bonded by vital
mutual genetic cooperation,
spreading their
inseparable lives
from equator to pole.

My hand, my arm,
make sweeping circles.
Dust climbs the ladder of light.
For this infernal, endless chore,
for these eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust.