An Embarrassment of Riches

Like most people, I have 'way too much to be thankful for. But near the top of the list is the ever-widening circle of poets who keep the whole Snake enterprise going. Judy Taylor Graham is one of our staunchest supporters; recently I heard her read these two poems, and insisted she send them to Medusa:

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
—Taylor Graham, Somerset

Thanksgiving Eve at Motel 6,
a day from home, five hundred miles
of brake-lights, everybody trying
to gather back together into family.
Most of what I know of family
is with me in these one-night
rented walls.

Bedtime, time to walk the dog.
Behind the dumpster she wags her tail,
smiles, and here’s a man’s
face, by reflected light. I can’t tell,
he might be somebody’s old
high school teacher, squatting
beside the cardboard box
where he’ll be spending the night.
His breath haloes in the cold.

I don’t know him.
My dog licks him in the face
as if she did.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.
A laden table, warmth between the walls.
People who greet me by name.

_______________________

THANKSGIVING MORNING
—Taylor Graham, Somerset
(for Roxy)

The wheels rolled you under, turned you back up
out of loam, out of cut grain and stubble,
so your eyes startled wide with the fright of day-
light, way past pain. You should have been dead
on that day of harvest. Surely it killed you.

But this is the day after. I’m using first-light
for mending, such scant daylight when it isn’t easy
to thread a needle. But mending is a way
to give thanks for time: regaining what used to be
ours, the things we’ve torn and used up, finished off,
not thought of. The doors that no longer open
because we slammed them too hard shut,
and simply boarded them up instead of pulling nails
and hinges, putting them back together
right. Where have we left the imprint of our fingers,
the dusting of our breath on a good day’s work?

Last night a surgeon stitched you back
to your life, and not for love of you,
but knowing his tools, how they take and
give back, how they implant and cut.

All night I dreamed how we’ve taken things apart
to parts, none so beautiful as the whole,
seen in a slanting, sharpened blade of light.

_______________________

Thanks, TG, for the TG poems on TG! "Home for the Holidays" just appeared on Centrifugal Eye; "Thanksgiving Day" appeared in The MacGuffin and is also in TG's Lies of the Visible. Head up to Hidden Passage Books in Placerville next Thursday, Nov. 30 at 7 PM to hear TG read from her award-winning chapbook, The Downstairs Dance Floor. That's 352 Main St., Placerville; stay for the refreshments and meet'n'greet.

And Happy Thanksgiving to the rest of you!

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry, photos and art, and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)