Thanksgiving
Karen Solie
From Modern and Normal (2005)
On an afternoon so still it's possible to see
how the world can fill the holes we make
and complete itself again. Or how desperately
we want this to be so. Downstream,
Dad hauled an 18-pound pike into the boat
and we saw no change in the river.
Water closed as its tail left the surface,
continued to reflect for us what we needed
from clear sky, wild poplar, red maple,
from the last warm day of that year.
Near Bull's Head, mule deer wander the streets
of Estuary, a village abandoned when CN tore out
its only bridge for miles. That they feed
on wild onion and millet, from gardens flung
to seed, looked fine to us, if not holy,
though we knew people who had lived there,
who cried moving their beds from the valley.
Even Hutterite cattle blunting through wolf willow,
sweet sage ghosting around them,
seemed closer to the animal they once were.
We drove away at twilight, the fish curled
in a blue plastic basin, gills reaching for the place
that had so plainly surrendered it. Our heads
were full of how seldom we are together now,
and when my mother prepared the flesh
my father had provided, we took into ourselves
its longing to be home.
