Thanksgiving Benediction

Thanksgiving

Every year we call it down upon ourselves,
the chaos of the day before the occasion,
the morning before the meal. Outdoors,
the men cut wood, fueling appetite
in the gray air, as Nana, Arlene, Mary,
Robin--whatever women we amount to--
turn loose from their wrappers the raw,
unmade ingredients. A flour sack leaks,
potatoes wobble down counter tops
tracking dirt like kids, blue hubbard[i] erupts
into shards and sticky pulp when it's whacked
with the big knife, cranberries leap away
rather than be halved. And the bird, poor
blue thing--only we see it in its dead skin--
gives up for good the long, obscene neck, the gizzard,
the liver quivering in my hand, the heart.

So what? What of it? Besides the laughter,
I mean, or the steam that shades the windows
so that the youngest sons must come inside
to see how the smells look. Besides
the piled wood closing over the porch windows,
the pipes the men fill, the beers
they crack, waiting in front of the game.

Any deliberate leap into chaos, small or large,
with an intent to make order, matters. That's what.
A whole day has passed between the first apple
cored for pie, and the last glass polished
and set down. This is a feast we know how to make,
a Day of Feast, a day of thanksgiving
for all we have and all we are and whatever
we've learned to do with it: Dear God, we thank you
for your gifts in this kitchen, the fire,
the food, the wine. That we are together here.
Bless the world that swirls outside these windows--
a room full of gifts seeming raw and disordered,
a great room in which the stoves are cold,
the food scattered, the children locked forever
outside dark windows. Dear God, grant
to the makers and keepers power to save it all.

Benediction

That’s how I think of it.  Good words, expression of gratitude, the results of good work, our ordering of the chaotic into something beneficial.  And maybe a metaphor for art, taking our incoherent experience and creating meaning.

That first line mystifies me.  They “call it down.”  While the phrase may be merely a figure of speech, there is something odd about it.  Gamey?  A call for a battle..

That first stanza, the women cooking the meal.  The abundance of raw foods.  The steamy windows.  And timing their preparation so all the dishes arrive, miraculously, at the same time.  These details give the poem authenticity that in themselves have value.  “Cataloguing” or “listing” as a technique or as a poetic genre, is one that in my estimation, seems to be a distinctly American form.   There are, of course, others, but Whitman excelled in listing occupations, forms of life, emotional states, and locales in order to express the awe he held in his vision of America.

But here, the list gives a sense of the sheer stuff and disorder that must be transformed to create a feast of thanksgiving.

The exclusivity or maybe obligation of women in the kitchen has, of course, changed, mostly in my lifetime, but as a child, especially on the Dzurick farm, Jewel rose long, long before dark.  They, the farmers, ate at noon.  Only the city people whose luxury of jobs, paid vacation days, paid sick days, and paid personal days would be so indulgent to eat Thanksgiving in late afternoon or evening.

Twenty to thirty people would dine, family and friends.  Pecan and pumpkin pies.  Jewel canned blackberry and gooseberry, and she retrieved them from the musty root cellar behind the house where they piled white potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples, and onions.  So the cobblers, too, were placed on a sideboard.

It was a mess, and somehow, my grandmother kept a smile.  It appeared, in some strange way, like a performance.  And despite her efforts, she would, as if confessing to a pries, elucidate, perhaps exagerate the shortcomings of the meal.

And what does it all mean?  The narrator explains implicitly and explicitly in the prayer that closes the poem.  The act of transforming the raw materials is clearly important.  But inside, it is the fellowship, rather womanship of the act itself.  The children are out of doors. The men are cracking beers and smoking pipes. While the “world” “swirls” and this, without explanation, is the blessing.

More catalogue poems to follow by Christopher Smart and Vance Hedderal.

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[i] Blue Hubbard is a winter squash.