Gratitude

I see the shallow children through the window
playing by the beach
with parents pushing swings
as high as they can reach

The road is slow, the traffic locked
‘til lights change and we move –
drivers with but one thing on their mind –
or thinking a thousand thoughts
of different kinds

Hatchbacks, four-wheel drives, sports cars and the odd sedan –
Diane, Mustafa, Willow, Jake and John –
going...going...going – coming from

The clock on the dash reads 8:47 –
fourteen minutes I’ll be late for work
I take a u-turn ‘round the round-a-bout and then
I drive below the tower where I spend
my day – with hopes to thrive

We come from varied pasts –
across the ditch, from southern states
Little Canada and Carolina –
so disparate, no fear –
in one place at one time
conducting lives we call careers

Working for a second income
striving for promotion for the few
or waiting for a better role beyond –
beyond the horizon past the window past the view

What then for head-sets, staring –
computer screens aware that eyes are fading
as they read data duller by the day

What then...what then is there to say...

I walk outside at lunch and see a man –
a man with wrinkled face and time to spend
pushing a trolley housing home
along a path that has no end

Next morning there’s a needless noise outside –
a bird is chirping –
sitting atop the street sign on the corner in my view

I consider him a moment
a happy chap – gratitude his friend –
a noisy miner singing to the few –

Graciousness is holding my hand, too.  

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Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance
(Epicurus)