It’s been a busy month here in Seattle, and there were so many wonderful things to celebrate and be thankful for during this last month and especially this Thanksgiving weekend.

Since last month’s Poem of the Month, I accepted a position with T-Mobile as their Manager of Finance Training and Career Development. My role with TM is to develop job competencies and career paths for the 900+ employees in TM’s Finance organization. I’m very thrilled to join such a great company.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, our festivities included my kids getting to meet their “new” cousins from California, who came up with their families to celebrate Thanksgiving at Jody’s parents. It was a convening of the Kealy clan that included Brothers, Sisters, close family friends, and an Aunt and Uncle. We all hit the Seattle Thanksgiving Parade, and to round out the weekend, Jody and I were lured into attending a surprise engagement party, where we got to spend a wonderful evening surrounding by new, and old, friends.

I hope that your Thanksgiving was filled with joy, hope, and that wonderful recognition that life creates infinite things to be thankful for.

Warmest wishes,
Stewart

Starfish
by Eleanor Lerman
(1952 -  )

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.