thanksgiving and wreckage

This day is for gratitude, and I could say something about the snow,
the way it’s descending, these soft kissing wisps.
I could tell you about the slow unfolding aroma from the oven,
the giant bird which will, in a matter of hours, feed nine.
There is, too, the blanket under which the bulk of my body
is now warming itself, or the nest of this room, or the silence
purring through the house. The day is a series of plentitudes,
heaping teaspoons of love and grace and goodness,
primed for clasped hands and laughter and words redolent of cinnamon
and bay leaf and eddies of melted butter. I can already taste that meal,
can already feel that first button on my jeans make its first indentation
in my belly, can imagine the gooey stupor of the guests as they gather
their shoes from the alcove and attempt to cleave themselves
from the toasty kitchen.

Still, I can’t help thinking of you and the table you’ve set.
I picture your thin frame, bent over a stove, stirring something
with apples, or sweet potatoes, shaking in salt or sugar,
willing yourself to forget, to veer away from the pungent
memories of us, all those afternoons we lost ourselves
and how delicious that kind of amnesia was. I see you,
standing before the cabinet where the plates are,
doing the math, frowning then steeling yourself,
almost taking another plate out, then not,
and I wonder if you know an absence is here, too,
the indentation where your body once was,
places you warmed with your breathing,
places I stowed you away for safekeeping.

I know that later, of course, the house will be filled
with voices, and there will be pie and stories, and night will crawl in,
camouflaging loss and regret and everything left unsaid and untouched.
We will find ourselves in a honeycomb of revelry,
and then the pile of dishes will ask for attention
until tiredness flatlines us, and for a moment, I hope,
we will each turn from the palpable wreckage,
this unplaced place setting, and feel the featherdust
of healing, let a lick of warm light
enter into the raw edges of whatever has been broken,
thread itself through,
and stitch us while we sleep.

lurking

There is a poem here surely, lurking under the dusty
floor coverings in the car, the dented recyclables still
swishing half-inches of water, the windshield thickened
with bugs from the long drive. Behind the jostled luggage
there must be a map folded on its corners, and the blanket
thrown to camouflage the valuables continues its guardianship,
regardless of the dust. Despite the clutter, something of beauty
must be resting in this worn place, keeping its shape, stubborn
with the certainty that it has not buckled under, not even
when the sky was shuddering with thunderstorms, or loss
raked through with sharp, indelicate fingers. The downed leaves
on the road make a fine weave, even as these wheels eviscerate
and scatter them. And I know, in the driver’s seat, though I am
barreling on, eyes on some fresh horizon, there is a soft pocket
of my body holding a memory from which it refuses divorce.
A June day full of sweat and happiness.
Pomegranate seeds fed, one by one, into an open mouth.
Love twinkling with its first sentence.
There is a poem here surely, lurking beneath and behind
the jewel coin ground into the cushions of the back seat.
But the poem is also that seat, those dented bottles, the bag
cresting with laundry. It is the map and the mess,
and I am in them both, slipping among the creases,
fumbling with desire to find my way
and at the same time,
to lose sight of it completely.

take two

Breakfast again, your order replicated from yesterday,
but you can’t help wanting the same thing and why
shouldn’t you, why the slight shame, the watery
embarrassment at the table, the waitress to your right
scrambling on her pad, so what, what’s wrong with sweetness
and starch, wanting my eggs just so,
the bowl of overpriced fruit, the persistent
coffee refills the busgirl offers, perimetering the restaurant.
You are just as hungry as yesterday,
perhaps even more so given the hour, and you need
the calories, the vitamins, the protein, the reinforcment
for this stranger city you are in, in it and in it,
and aren’t you lucky in the midst of that strangeness,
knowing what you like, knowing what will fill you,
what will feed you?

The day has to begin somewhere.
Why not here, again?

Still, out of sheepishness at the return,
you contemplated the alternatives, the gaggle
of cafes downtown no doubt bearing
better cups of coffee, the fancy brunch spots
with their champagne cocktails and stiff linens.
You’d thought about the farmer’s market, even,
shuffling the stalls to pluck single servings
from the freebee tray, like a crow.

But you knew, deep down, in the fire of your belly,
you knew what you need for the sharp corners,
each razory highway. You knew what grief called for,
what anchored the filmy horizon line of your courage,
what lay the tracks for fresh hope.
So you did not avert your gaze at the waitress,
even when she paused mid-way in her penmanship,
already anticipating the rest. You did not speed through
your breakfast, aiming for a quick getaway
before anyone could further notate your predictable nature,
your unevolved palate, your lack of risk and spice.
You did not apologize – to anyone, to yourself –
for the six half-slices of bread pooling in syrup,
for the buttery eggs and the voluminous coffee.
You did not apologize for the price or the place
or for the instructions your stomach gave to return
from where you had been only just yesterday, at a table
so much like this one.

Instead, you made an alliance with this meal.
You said, “I give myself to you.”
You lay prostrate before the plates with sugar on your lips.

Sometimes, things remain where you left them, waiting
to be of service again. Sometimes, the cure for sadness
is softness. Sometimes, you remember not to strain so hard,
to align with simplicity and the plate right in front of you,
to migrate a little closer to home.