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and thank you.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. As a young child, when someone handed me a treat, a gift, performed some kindness.

My mother would bend over me with her soft eyes and ask,

what do you say?

I'd sheepishly look up at them and speak those words she taught me.

Thank you, then run off.

She'd stand up and beam proudly.

Surrounding adults would respond, what? up and just as my mom trained me to express gratitude I did the same with my children, a daisy chain of courtesies.

In a way, my books of poetry can be seen as one big gratitude journal for all that inspires awe, for all that grounds me.

I am not alone. One of my favorite poems is simply titled Thanks by

Youssef Kumenyaka. The Old One of my favorite poems is also a poem of

thankfulness.

Those poems are also small notes of appreciation,

in aggregate, a love letter to our personal wilderness of beauty, to the forces of good and kindness in the world,

a camping trip with friends, mornings full of bird song, acts of resistance whose aim is a just

an equitable society. Writing such poems cultivates peace in me. It reminds me that life is not all

dissatisfaction and disappointments. Reading poems that strike big-hearted notes of

the ecstatic have me celebrate my own victories and joys, small things

in life that are meaningful, yet unnoticable to the distracted eye.

...