Things I'm thankful for :)

1. Dogs - especially ones who whine ecstatically when they see me
2. Men who like big words - mostly because it means they're not afraid of me
3. Doctors - especially those who trust me
4. Art - because where would we be without really great nudes?
5. Insulin - cuz it's awesome; you should try it sometime
6. My poems - especially since I don't show them to anyone anymore
7. My job - because I love it, and I'm really good at it
8. Natalie Merchant - playing in my car all month
9. Rainer Maria Rilke - who always inspires me
10. All of the wonderful, brilliant, interesting people in my life - I love you all

Rilke, as ever.

Books about the rain for an elementary school classroom :)

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me — the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods —

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house — , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced
upon, —
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke

Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell