by Brett Rutherford

THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS

 

i

Although base Nature made us
     and will have its way,
we bow our heads in thankfulness
that we do not live in a universe
where all the food is gray.

  

ii

Just halfway through
the holiday repast,
the room explodes
in fisticuffs,
     drawn knives
and a pool of blood
on the dining room floor. 

That’s how Thanksgiving ends,
as every hostess knows,
if too small a bird provokes
an insufficiency of stuffing.

 

iii

Sixth place at table
reserved for Squanto’s ghost.
Over the steaming corn,
turkey and gravy,
cranberry red
he utters the words
his people would one day rue:
“Welcome, Englishmen!”

 

iv

Apocryphal feast
we learn about
as we droop
from sauce and stuffing:

 An immense turkey
stuffed with a duck entire,
its swollen cavity
crammed with a hen,

into whose bosom
three pigeons,
stuffed with quail,

each tiny quail
engulfing one minute
hummingbird.

 As we walk home,
wine-warmed and down
in our vigilance,
will some vast hand
sweep downwards
from the kettle-black sky —

 and after a suitable
cleaning and marinade,
will we be stuffed
in turn inside
some vast and whale-like
cavity, waiting to bake
slowly and tenderly for those
who know Earth
as the food planet?

 

(November 2015)