11.26.2003

Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow (& today), everyone, from Henry & Bluejay & Blackstone & Prof. Hinkel too. In the morning we fly to Minnysota, where this turkey cames from. Here's my canonical (for now) T-poem, from Grassblade Light chapter "The Lost Notebooks":

 14



A little rain on Thanksgiving. Then moist air,
light clouds flowing under a luminous half-
moon. I walk along wet streets (whiff
of turkey floating with me) to the curved corner


guarded by an old, elaborate iron gate
into the playground, quiet tonight,
where we brought them long ago. Light
patter on the fallen leaves. The distance.


Yours, theirs... my own. The infinite
abandoned garden. I shall not drink with you again.
Until. Henry in his cardboard coracle (man
overboard), and Blackstone, carving in granite


the gnarled character for hollowness,
and Bluejay, waiting on the empty table,
pilgrim-servant-scavenger – the whole stable
gathering together by the empty sofa, sees


her, coming aboard – the day of Jubilee.
Across the empty plate of prairie
where the wind is born, and, ghostly,
elevates a clay-bowl memory (into eternity).


Because every feast's Thanksgiving, after all –
a shared-out superflux, unto the Peaceful One;
and every woman's Indian, and every man
is rubicund – ruddied by the blessings of the fall;


and while we walk beneath the twilight sphere
in gradual harmony, an excess love extends
its kelson overhead – the cosmos sends
a simple letter, momentary sentence: Join me here.



11.26.98

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