Wednesday, November 18, 2020

A poem for the holiday

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. 

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