Shape and Substance

Grateful

is too delicious to use

dismissively, like “Thanks,”

half-mumbled at held-open doors

to a stranger passing in life’s other lane,

or when receiving a pack of gum from

a clerk’s hand in some convenience store.

Grateful must linger on the palate, be savored

until the juice of gratitude has passed

across the tongue and down the throat

into the stomach, digested and dispatched

throughout the bloodstream, so it is possible

to feel, to think,

to speak, to hope,

to live.

—Paul Hooker, 2019 I wrote this poem the day after Thanksgiving, five years ago. It’s been published in an Austin Seminary publication and again in The Presbyterian Outlook. I had forgotten about it until I was combing through the archives of my writing. I thought it might be worth reoffering. I hope your Thanksgiving was a day of gratitude for whatever gifts populate your life. You are among those that populate mine.