Poem for Friday and Thanksgiving Day

Around Us
By Marvin Bell

We need some pines to assuage the darkness
when it blankets the mind,
we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly
as a plane's wing, and a worn bed of
needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind,
and a blur or two of a wild thing
that sees and is not seen. We need these things
between appointments, after work,
and, if we keep them, then someone someday,
lying down after a walk
and supper, with the fire hole wet down,
the whole night sky set at a particular
time, without numbers or hours, will cause
a little sound of thanks -- a zipper or a snap --
to close round the moment and the thought
of whatever good we did.

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I did the same things as many Americans on Thursday: slept late, woke up and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, did some reading, waited for relatives to arrive, hung out with in-laws, went over to parents' house, visited with sibling's family, ate Thanksgiving dinner with full extended family, and watched a bit of football. Because we have both vegetarians and non-vegetarians, we had a huge amount of food -- I had fruit, nuts, cheese, tofurkey, stuffing, potatoes, carrot souffle, sweet potatoes, butternut squash lasagna, cranberry sauce, plus a tiny piece of pecan pie which was all I could manage to eat for dessert though there were five or six other choices. The cousins did a lot of running around together, my mother had a treasure hunt and pinata for the no-longer-really-kids, and we came home to the pleasure of Baltimore beating Pittsburgh!


















Paul's annual cookie cake (previous cakes: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012).