Because I Believe in Miracles.

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Michelle who gives so much beauty to our community at Today's Little Ditty for Roundup.

Tomorrow would have been my father's 70th birthday, and I've got miracles on my mind. My father WAS a miracle, and he taught me to see the whole world that way. Little by little I've been going through his scrapbooks from the years he lived in Bismarck,  ND, and what overwhelms me is how despite health and other difficulties, he found beauty everywhere. Here are a couple of quotes from a newsletter he wrote for the Bismarck Cancer Center quarterly newsletter:

"One of my favorite quotes is by David Ben-Gurion: 'In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.” I know that there a lot of folks who can’t bring themselves to accept that concept, but, from my own experience fighting cancer, I believe it true.'"

"Not surprisingly, faith and hope are huge factors in their fight against cancer. Quite often, they will express belief in and hope for a miracle in their lives—a miracle that they do not simply wish for but make considerable personal effort to encourage through active participation in their treatment."

He was a regular Walt Whitman. So, today, for him, I give you "Miracles" by Walt Whitman.

Miracles
by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the
        water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
        with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
        forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so
        quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
        same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
        ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?