Meditations on Gratitude

By Charles E. Taylor

Meditations on Gratitude is an affirmation of life, the eternal yes, and the voice of one returning to foundations of responsibility, love, and understanding often learned in adolescent experience. The poems depict growth from solipsism, preoccupation with pain and fear, to acceptance, and surrender. They allow the personae growth in recognition of death. Some understandings came out of my association with Armida Alexander, my Unitarian Universalist minister, and fulfillment of my roles as husband and father. The poems depict a new assumption of responsibility sometimes through simple awareness of the words please, and thank you. Thus, the poetic voice becomes one of gratitude, and an affirmation of life, life as a great gift, for as Jon Kabat-Zinn has said stated in his book Full Catastrophe Living, as long as one is breathing, one is doing something right. In meditation, both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist traditions emphasize breath, and often beginning meditation starts with simple breath counting. From this comes insight, and this is the point of Meditations on Gratitude, the insight of life as in the Buddha turning after attaining Enlightenment to the earth, and breath became essence. Christians would call this the breath of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499077629

Charles E. Taylor

Charles E Taylor lives in Hartford, South Dakotas with his wife Marjorie Remacle-Taylor, their dog Cinco, and their cat Pepper. Charles and Marjorie moved to the Sioux Falls area in 1993 and have lived in their home in Hartford for twenty years. A graduate of Grinnell College, The University of Iowa, and Colorado State University, Charles holds a BA in English and history, an MA in English, an Ed S in college teaching, and an MFA in creative writing. He has also earned the Professional Certificate in Photography, and the Advanced Certificate in Landscape and Nature Photography from The New York Institute of Photography. Their daughter Laurel Ann Taylor lives and teaches in Hokkaido, Japan. Charles reads poetry and religious books, and says that people are his reason for living. In 2009 he published his first book of poems and Photographs, Winter from Spring through Xlibris. He is influenced by the poetry of TS Eliot, Emily Dickenson, and Walt Whitman. Charles taught college English for 22 years, and says he learned most from his work in fast-food restaurants. He is a member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Active Generations where he volunteers as a coffee shop attendant and a creative writing group leader.

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Copyright © 2014 by Charles E. Taylor.

Photos by Charles E. Taylor

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Rev. date: 09/30/2014

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CONTENTS

Introduction

My Joints Hurt Today

Living In Silence

Thoughts Before Driving After Prayer

Our Gifts Each Other

Coming Home To South Dakota

Homestead

What For My Dad

Anasazi Departure

Death Be Most Gone

After The Flood Of Blood

Mating Dance

Morning Meditation

A Love Song Of Gems

An Elegy For My Mother, Dorothy

Arietta’s Song

Mother’s Baptism

Laurel Ann

Higher Power

First Meditation

Smells Of The Dog, Tail Of The Cat

First Ten Minutes

My Hurt For Dad

Self-Healing Meditation

Laurel’s Profession

Faded Memories

Second Meditation

Meditation On Space

She Lives 12,000 Miles Away

More Healing

Orange Bicycle

Asking For Acceptance

Reverence After Eating Breakfast

Dakota Sky

Verne At The Piano

Grace

Mahayana

Golden Years Are Brown

I Found Love

New Diagnosis

More New Beginnings

Dissolving Straight Lines

I Sit Before

High Definition

Meditation On Work

Nine Eleven

Rhapsody On Theme Of Death

Death Into Life

Jan And Bob

Steamed Milk

Volunteer

Brian

My Last Will

For my father Lenard,

Who taught me to study, to be honest, and to tell stories.

INTRODUCTION

I began these poems in a year of convalescence; after three life-threatening illness, my body, emaciated from medication poisoning and side-effects, a serious gastrointestinal bleed, and kidney shutdown, I turned to writing in my journal out of which came sketches for poems. The photographs followed. These experiences and situations occurred between May 2011 and August 2014 although the actual illnesses took place into the first two years. Dr. J Chris Nordgrun, staff psychologist at Avera Me Kinnon Behavioral Health Hospital, encouraged me to pursue my life-long love of writing. In many ways the poems continue out of my first book, Winter from Spring, 2009, and brought me to an understanding, as Faulkner said, of what the heart means or …the old universal truths of the human heart. When I was faced with the end of my life, I began to understand my family, my friends, and the doctors and nurses who had put me back together. For the first time in sixty years of life I came to understandings of truth and mortality. Dr. Nordgrun said that was becoming, in Maslow’s terms, self-actualized. Writing poetry does not necessarily follow from only an overflow of powerful emotion, but through the craft of recollection in tranquility. In seeking advice from Professor Bill Tremblay and my friend Mark Sanderson, I realized needs of concrete supporting detail and clarity if the sketches were to become a book. From October 2013 to September 2014, poetic sketches became poems, and a sequence of poetic realizations became the shape of living affirmations. Meditation begun in 2011 became the mode and direction of my poetic voice.

Meditations on Gratitude is an affirmation of life, the eternal yes, and the voice of one returning to foundations of responsibility, love, and understanding often learned in adolescent experience. The poems depict growth from solipsism, preoccupation with pain and fear, to acceptance, and surrender. They allow the personae growth in recognition of death. Some understandings came out of my association with Armida Alexander, my Unitarian Universalist minister, and fulfillment of my roles as husband and father. The poems depict a new assumption of responsibility sometimes through simple awareness of the words please, and thank you. Thus, the poetic voice becomes one of gratitude, and an affirmation of life, life as a great gift, for as Jon Kabat-Zinn has said in his book Full Catastrophe Living, as long as one is breathing, one is doing something right. In meditation, both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist traditions emphasize breath, and often beginning meditation starts with simple breath counting. From this comes insight, and this is the point of Meditations on Gratitude, the insight of life as in the Buddha turning after attaining