Thanksgiving Prayer, 2012
It is
the day we give thanks
to be
at a full table, and outside
the
Olympics teeth the dusking
horizon.
Here we’re surrounded
by certainty
in the midst of the uncertain:
for
mountains will not move even
for superstorms
or homelands
in
upheaval: the incontrovertible danger
of
stepping outside: the losses we have
or
haven’t named to one another.
But
here: there is a richness.
There
is a feeling of something complete:
meats
waiting to loose the juices
that
have been simmering in smoke,
lasagna
and stuffings and casseroles
that
are each a small history
of
ourselves. Let us be grateful in our faith
that
what is unseen is not unheard:
that
families, ours and others,
extend
beyond bloodlines, that we have arrived
here,
where recipes steam
from
memory at a place beyond
our
griefs. Let us remember
that
while we may be hundreds
of
miles from the places we were born,
we are
not far from home.
2 comments:
I like the idea in this poem that people far from home can make families from those around them, not necessarily blood relatives. I feel like students and travelers can relate to this congeniality.
Thanks, Alice. When I lived in Seattle, I would write a Thanksgiving prayer each year for our gathering of friends.They were usually informal, but always fun to write.
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