gratitude

part of the mess is remembering to slow down and say thank you. 

also, thank: an invented folk story

Twice below much ground pepper and coarse salt, Gratitude heard Patience say she forgot to listen to a bent branch and so the branch knotted in a soft deafness of its own. The branch knotted and spun around all other branches, called itself a part of something else. On remembering something softly akin to failure, Patience's voice stopped, her head rolled off, and she swallowed a pond. Patience looked and Gratitude, showed her the pond she'd swallowed, the accumulation of skipped stones and carp; she showed all this and said, "What now?"


Gratitude gave Patience a piece of masking tape, some dried flowers and said, "What are you waiting for?" 


Patience was quick to piece herself back together and see that everything was already what everything already was and it was plenty, was plentiful, was something new that took the name Goodness. And Goodness was happy to be acknowledged, to be finally seen for her parachute body inside a nest. Gratitude and Patience were proud scouts of Goodness and the three of them made boats, threw sticks in water and watched them go, and birthed long days of watching how things go and go and go.