Talking around the table about the mixed message of Thanksgiving–my discomfort with the often phony-feeling professions of gratitude, and of course, what we did and do to native populations. A friend suggested that there should be a Jewish holiday– if there isn’t one already–called “Misgiving.”
But someone asked me what sincere gratitude would sound like. I think something like this:
Perhaps the World Ends Here
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers. Continue reading “Thanksgiving misgivings?”
If you want a good poem about war, you never have to look further than the Polish poets, who were invaded by someone every century.
I don’t write many overtly political poems, but this one seems to sum up my hopes and fears for today.
Yesterday I listened as my favorite spiritual leader, Margaret Holub, struggled for words of consolation after the Pittsburg shooting. She said that words didn’t come quickly to her, and I reflected that anyone to whom words came in facile way after a such a rift in the social fabric would be a charlatan. That online meeting we were a part of was faltering, baffled.
In case you think that formal poetry is over, A. E. Stallings is able to write poems on contemporary themes using form and rhyme. To wit, a sonnet about bedbugs. Or is it?
Today it’s been three weeks since my close encounter with a Jeep. You would think it gives me a lot of time for poetry, but I’m finding it hard to concentrate on anything serious. I did come across this poem, though, which I am passing along:
Here is one by Joseph Stroud–one long exhalation of description that opens at the end. To me, the title adds a little twist to the poem–life itself is so strange and gorgeous, we don’t need to look further than the road we are on for poetry. Though I have no way of knowing whether that’s what he meant.
A bit late, a bit short, but…
I unintentionally lured a hummingbird into the jaws of my cat a few days ago, trying to get it down from the skylight. I have now thought of several ways I could easily have avoided this savage death. Not that it does the poor, tiny bird any good. That kind of regret is expressed for a different animal in this poem by Ruth Stone.
And so it’s time again for a Monday poem, when I just posted last Monday’s! Today, a poem on Arthritis, which I never thought about when young. But well described by Carol Moldaw, along with other strands of thought. Carol will be reading in October for Marin Poetry Center.