Beating the rush
Day after Thanksgiving. I give thanks for Eveto beat the rush of appreciating hernext year and let her sleep inuntil three hundred o’clock.Thank you light on the mountainfor being my star on cloudy nights.Thank you all the guns I’ve never ownedand killed myself with on a whim.No one lives up there, it’s just a lighton a pole I can’t explain to my cat.Thank you Erik Satie for taking my body apartand putting it back together as the Seine.How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?Thank you rhyme and silly people. Thank you airfor holding me in your arms, sunshinefor the bodyguard of my shadow, my three toiletsfor never overflowing. But no joy, toilets,no inexpressible fullness? Who do I thankfor being a 40-ounce beer in a shot glass,an avalanche on the head of a pin, a pogo stickdoing calisthenics in a rib cage, a galloping horseof breath, and how do I set desire asidefor the charms of fogand the perennial debutante of springforever, as ina long weekend at least? Thank you heroinfor seeing the blood on my tongueand flying over my house. Thank you the ideaof angels and the truth of hawks and the successof Icarus for a while. And of courseI own a plunger to convince Mission ControlI’ve thought of everything that can go wrong.May I take off now, may I go to the moonto look at the Earth and miss it so muchthat I write it a letter: Thank you Pacificand Atlantic, Alps and Himalayas, sealsand dung beetles and platypiand apple pie, cirrus and stratus,Stratocaster and roller coaster: Will youtake me back? And why do we kill a birdto show thanks? Exactly what embraceare we asking for with that? Of love? Vengeance?Suddenly this poem is vegetarianand thanking you for readingand breathing and thinking next yearwe’ll eat whatever gets killed in the roadand be happy we exist to be sad about that.
