A note on Thanksgiving Day, 2021

Everything, Everyone

I think this year you are going to ask me again

to tell you something I am thankful for,

this being Thanksgiving again, like last year,

or was it the year before that we all sat in the living

room, some with kids in their laps fidgeting

and not really getting the point and some with a beer

or a glass of wine on their knees and some,

just one or two, nodding off into a sofa

and a family all around and a long, long life behind,

the last of the debts paid, the arrangements

already made with the church, the will updated

one last time, the important private conversations—

you know which ones I am talking about,

the ones where they look you in the eye as if it’s

for the first time and take you so gently by the hand

as if you were ten years old again, the conversations

they’d meant to have with you all along—

finally over and done with so that now they can just

nod off, which is, or was, their version

of something to be thankful for,

and knowing how much there really is

to be thankful for—my own family, for instance,

meaning everyone, everyone in this living room and

many who are not, the world really, and some

who will never be again, and for my own life

lengthening like a shadow in the afternoon,

every year longer, a shadow to be thankful for.

I think you are going to ask me again to say it,

that thing that I am so thankful for, so that I

should sit down for once with pen and paper

and make a list and from that list choose that one

thing for which I am most thankful,

but I can’t, honestly, I can’t, because honestly

there’s too much on the list and I am thankful for

everything on it, for all of it and for you.