I am thankful

to Edison (it brings me great joy every time the lights come on)

and, to the woman who invented water, whose name we never learned in history class (typical)

I am thankful to the people of Honduras, where the label on my underwear indicates its creation.

I eschewed (when’s the last time you read that word?) them in my youth. Too much to launder. Too much to fold. Now, they are my essential second skin, for which I give thanks.

I am thankful for my right thumb.

Facing traffic – arm out – a slight cant of the wrist pointing backward, but meaning FORWARD

My super Uber forty years ago

I stuck it out on Route 16 — Yorkshire, New York. (cue Bobby Mcgee)

rode it all the way to New Orleans –

I am thankful the route proved circuitous

And it took me through Miami on an early Sunday morning in the fall of 1979.

Miami, thankful then to be a small southern city dozing under an illusion — each tomorrow will be better than every yesterday.  (Two words: McDuffie. Mariel.)

I washed back up in Miami three years later.  On my way to Berkley.  Never left. For that I might be thankful.