Giving Thanks For Lack

Thanksgiving sunrise (above) and sunset (below).

And the Manzano range after a front came through.

 I never really thought to give thanks for lack, but there you go.

Aviation has been a part of my soul for as long as I can remember, but lack of funds always held me back from the participation for which I longed.

Now I understand why.

I didn't have the maturity to cherish the gift. I took stupid chances, once almost killed myself (I did manage to cut my throat), and, not having learned, continued to showboat.

Lack let me live.

Similar thing, with cancer. Insurance went away long ago, and instead of hanging my hopes on others' 'healing prowess', I was on my own.

I had to work with God to reinvent every day, to find motivation to...well, not thrive, that's out of reach...no, it's motivation not to quit. For one more day.

There's no anxious waiting for test results, no waiting rooms freighted with the scents of antiseptic and doom.

There's just the here and now.

Mind, by the time the insurance ran out the doctors had given up, and were only offering palliative care. So there wasn't a whole lot to lose.

But in my lack, I won.

I cannot afford insurance,

had to care for self instead,

and have thus found, with some assurance,

that had I wealth, I would be dead.

I had to fight each living day,

I had to learn my enemy,

but if perchance I might just pay

someone to do this work for me

I would have ended drugged and slack,

petitioner to human grace;

persist in this, you can’t go back

to that harder, better place

where alone you pit your will

against that thing which aims to kill.

This sonnet first appeared as a comment on Steve Laube's blog post Money Problems.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is LIKE. I like it.

Ok, dude, so well it's like

not too good and not too gnarly;

don't remember where I parked my bike,

and the worst thing, it's a Harley,

really too big to misplace

so on will come my thinking hat,

and thus I hope by God's bright grace

I will recall just where it's at.

Could it be out on the street?

Nope, it could be, but's not there.

Did I ride it out to greet

the arrival of the dogs' au pair?

Oh, I worried much too soon,

it's parked here in the living room!

Doesn't everyone keep Hogs inside?

Three and a half minutes. Doesn't show, eh?

Here's The Holly And The Ivy  by Mediaeval Baebes. Yes, really.

Sylvia says, as long as I don't lack ice cream, no-one gets hurt.