Grateful at Eighty-Eight

Lao Tzu called it Tao, “the Way,” since it permeates everything and wants to draw me into peaceful places. Gratitude supplants fear for the most part as one grows older. I’m thankful older folk gave the love, resources, and guidance for me to discover what is important in life, and to pass this knowledge on in my sixty years of writing.

Grateful at Eighty-Eight

‘All life comes from it.
It wraps everything
with its love as in
a garment . . . I do not
know its name, and so
I call it Tao, the Way.” Lao Tzu

It can’t be long before my last day,
as Siamese Max, also afflicted,
kneads my napping chest
in a long purr, knowing that we live
less by knowledge than by belonging,
less by fame than by touch,
less by searching than by listening,
summed up in minor acts of kindness.

That’s much clearer to me now
than in my heyday of strength.
Yet I don’t want to withdraw from
the pain of the planet, the insanity of war,
the suffering of the sick
or the greed and cruelty
launched by our untamed fears.

So I leave this well-worn stone
near water on the garden sundial,
as a gift of gratitude for so much beauty,
this kaleidoscope of color, shape, and birdsong
wrapping everything in its garment of love.