Gratitude

Stockholm harbor

I sat by the water in Stockholm harbor and felt the September sun warm my skin. I played music in a foreign land to raucous applause. I have befriended a hundred strangers in a hundred different lands and glimpsed worlds strange and alien.

Love, love, love

I have held a sleeping child to my chest and felt a surge of love that, even then, I knew I could never fully comprehend. I have beheld a beautiful woman, naked and in love, at the foot of my bed, ghostly in the moonlight. I have had my life confirmed and cleansed with the agony of despair; and had it buoyed with the searing pain of joy.

Grizzly

I saw blond death on a riverbank and floated beyond it, awestruck and solemn, but unafraid. I have seen the magical dragon wending its way through the flutter of shadow and light that played beneath summer leaves. I have taken comfort in the realization that, no matter what, one can know nothing, nothing at all about truth and the nature of things.

Mountaintop

Whatever may come, I have beheld a marvelous tale. It's all mine. Forever.