Poets’ Corner: Putting the “Thanks” Back Into “Thanksgiving”

25 Nov Poets’ Corner: Putting the “Thanks” Back Into “Thanksgiving”

Thanksgiving is a story of traditions old and new, a day of  family, feasting, and football. And all that is good, but is it good enough? Shouldn’t Thanksgiving be about more than that? This poem by Word Woman Rosemerry Trommer puts the “thanks” back in Thanksgiving.

Autumnal

after a line from William Stafford

When the leaves are about to yellow and fall

ask me then how I tried to hold on to what was green,

how I thought perhaps I was different,

how everything I thought I knew about gold

turned brittle and brown. Ask me what it was like

to fall then. Sometimes the world’s workings feel transparent

and we know ourselves as the world. Sometimes

the only words that can find our lips are thank you,

though the gifts look nothing like anything

we ever thought we wanted. Sometimes, gratitude

arrives in us, not because we are willing,

but because it insists on itself, like a weed,

like a wind, like change.