Shining, breathing slow
A poem about giving thanks, and about the moon
Today is this poem’s first appearance on Substack, or anywhere for that matter. It’s one that I’ve had my doubts about for years, but I liked bits of it too much to throw it away … and I like the whole thing much better now that I’ve given it a good sweep-and-dust.
For your pre-Thanksgiving pleasure (or something), a post-Thanksgiving meditation from my days of office life, when everyone’s holidays followed them to work. Maybe you’re living those days, or maybe you remember them. Maybe you’ll have some fun deciding which of the three characters in this poem is really you.
AFTER THANKSGIVING 2013
Stepping out the office door, into the twilight
of the last Monday in November, and someone
who has stepped out with me still is talking
about the holiday, how right she was
to stay home with her lover and a cleansing fast,
to spare herself a glut of family drama,
its roles and practiced speeches, and how thankful
she was to miss her mother’s long complaints,
the endless flow of them that smothered gratitude
for anyone who listened … and in the east, around
one edge of cloud, a pale and silent moon
draws back the thin late-autumn mist and winks at me
behind a lattice of bent empty branches,
and at the stoplight one of us keeps walking,
never glancing up; two stay behind
in still and wordless orbit, shining, breathing slow.
Oh! I’m so glad for your poem. Thank you for sharing it after this long time. As my family gets smaller, I think back to all of the Thanksgivings I dreaded or avoided. And I wonder now what it all meant — my anxiety about this day and the compression of all of my fears into a meal on a day. And I miss a lot of those people now that they are in Heaven and I wonder if it would have been better if I’d risen to the occasion. But if I could have chosen, I’d have preferred to have seen them on a plain wet Wednesday. Perhaps if I’d seen them on this particular Thursday of the year, I might not have had the bravery for the other plain days. I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out. But I know something. I am very grateful for you and your poems.
I spent more than a few minutes musing over this one, Elizabeth, trying to assure myself that the moon was one of the characters and, if it was, whether I felt up to the honor of aligning myself with her (or, in the opinion of at least one of my readers awhile back, him).
I feel fortunate to not be the woman who felt suffocated by her mother's complaints. I didn't have a perfect relationship with my mom, and I missed many holidays with her due to distance, but I would never have minded being there, if I could have. So, I guess that leaves the third character. You?
The moon on my way home from our Friendsgiving last night was laying on her back just barely above the tree line. Her illuminated part took the shape of a giant salad bowl, and she was the color of a biscuit. Stunning.