Thanksgiving – Places for Everyone

Somehow there are places enough for everyone
A tectonic shifting of tableware
A tsunami of saucers, plates, and bowls
The good Thanksgiving and Christmas settings

A rare bottle of Chateau du Supermarket
Gallons of iced tea, and soda for the kids
So many at the children’s table this year
And who will now sit in Grandfather’s place?

This year he dines at that Table in Paradise
Where there are always places enough for everyone

give thanks
                    for what
things you love
things you care for
things you need
give thanks
give thanks
                   for food
                   for family & friends
give thanks
                   for faith
                   for happiness
                   for joy
                   for love
                   for delight
                   for forgiveness
                   For life.
give thanks to the world

U Thant
suited this
assembly and
made well
of United
Nations then
only his
legacy may
tell if
this Cuban
thaw matched
his twill
and his
real change
for world
peace in
Thanksgiving here.

whose that someone there on the corner
influencing me with her sign
does she expect me to leave her money.

sign says to me, love and remember
take care of my sweet things , for me,
I'm  on my way home.
I'm here, see me
my hurt and every hope.

She planted the sign inside me
as I drove by
The thought of her there still
and I was can'ting and I'm still
thinking I can't.
Hoping, instead, that the heaven rises open for her.

all her quotes were soon delivered by the passer byes
the ambulance driver had already gone, too.
All had left, but was me, laying down beside her
No God to be watching over -
We are now
the only ones watching
her story is sorta sad, tragic and funny.

the noon time sun pierced her there on the ground
Beside snow covered wheels were white and soundless
like photos that were a patch of dark blood was still mixing.

I over think on my worries, now, and know little else, because
She is friendless sitting still there in my memory;
Simply, I am to be no longer existing - the heavens, who do not care.
I do not guard my worried me, just kneel, I am liable
not have never read on his word, in my bible.

I am someone lesser, man now, for not believing
a wandering begging and I am blinding to pull off
all that I've gathered by my skin - inside this foxskin cloth,

that ******* the corner, so long she waited to get money from here to
travel to Baltimore, she had in her pocket her sister, Gabriela's calligraphy, her darned socks.

I think I will take a long Northern train to see tonight,
And pray with imagined gifts, quitting myself
and she hushed me. "I am a seed eternally."

she had beautiful eyelids and my nose knows
those pulsing streams are pillows that still gather
up on the down dust smatters from rain,
still the eyes are Writing
old pipers notes long ago accordion tunes.

In the gray light of this late autumn morning
a young mother with holiday bags on her arms
and another set underneath her eyes, carries on
– assuming with positive intent – the American
tradition of some overweight man crawling
through chimneys. Stepping out unscathed by soot.
Her son, barely three and giddy with trust, hungrily
eats this up like a peaceful Thanksgiving meal.
These lies that we carry cautiously like gifts
and pass onto our children like genes who
then pass them onto his or her friends always
(in the end) come back unpleasantly to hurt us.

An apple in a pinch
Waterfalls called out for toddlers, Father's
Sports fanatic sweater wearers week.
***** by Saturday,
By the phone in Vermont but from India
Inside of six days: Seven, holidays, prey animals;

No one even pretends to sleep anymore
Anywhere words and eye fluttering can be had.
No caves to scribble with history, all purchase
Buying-Power inscribed.

Just a brief day, sixteen hours or less
Maybe two midnights more.

It is a midsummer storm, and the air is textured like heavy cream
warm and thick and sweet. It hasn't yet began to rain, and bare toes
grasp clods of dust, the kind with root fibers tangled inside,
and everything  is keenly sensed: the smell, the taste, the touch,
the sound of the wind and the warmth in this charged moment.

It is impossible to not be humbled before these grey clouds,
massive structures that remind you of the roiling turbidity of silt
at the bottom of a river, freshly disturbed by a fish's tail
- except these grey giants, these clouds feel infinitely large.
Humbled, yes.

And powerful: the little human on the parched earth
feels vigor pumping through veins,
a feeling typically beyond recollection
that is difficult to trace to its source.
Where is this power flowing from? Not from some
deluded sense that this small mammal could shift
a single bead of moisture in the sky, no;
where is this power flowing to? Its effect is . . . unplanned,
it is spontaneous in nature, even though it feels so rooted
that no-one, certainly not you, could move it.

This power? The source is invisible, the fate uncertain.

The purpose? Take note. This is faith:
to be so confronted by reality that your inner monologue
forgets to stay in a continuous loop; at last, you hear your part
in a greater melody; to concentrate
on something outside the ceiling of your skull.

Reality will only be itself.
Either project your attention outwards to trust the truth,
or blind yourself with anxiety.

The power you feel inside the storm does not belong to you,
it belongs to the Greater Picture. But, the choice is always yours:
hide away, or raise your face. the   rain
    begins
          to             fall.