Happy Thanksgiving

 

Variations on a Theme

 Thank you my life long afternoon

 late in this spring that has no age

 my window above the river

 for the woman you led me to

 when it was time at last the words

 coming to me out of mid-air

 that carried me through the clear day

 and come even now to find me

 for old friends and echoes of them

 those mistakes only I could make

 homesickness that guides the plovers

 from somewhere they had loved before

 they knew they loved it to somewhere

 they had loved before they saw it

 thank you good body hand and eye

 and the places and moments known

 only to me revisiting

 once more complete just as they are

 and the morning stars I have seen

 and the dogs who are guiding me

--W.S. Merwin

 Last Thanksgiving I posted a Merwin poem that some readers found a little too, let’s say ironic. So even though this is a poem of spring, there’s giving thanks in it. In that way it can be read as saying that gratitude can be felt any day, in this case in long old age, and perhaps Thanksgiving symbolizes that. For me this poem has the additional benefit of expressing several specific reasons for my own daily gratitude, including the (endangered) snowy plovers of our own North Coast beaches.

Window on Beings and Doings

Smooth is the skin of the woman who irons. 

Tall and bony, the man who repairs umbrellas.

 Plucked, the woman who sells chickens. 

In the inquisitor’s eyes shine demons.

 Coins lie behind the usurer’s eyelids. 

The watchmaker’s whiskers mark the hours.

 The janitor has keys for fingers.

 The prison guard looks like the prisoner and the psychiatrist looks crazed.

 The hunter becomes the animal he pursues. 

Time turns lovers into twins. 

The dog walks the man who walks him.

 The tortured tortures the dreams of the torturer.

 The poet flees from the metaphor in the mirror.

 --Eduardo Galeano

 from his book, Walking Words

 I heard Eduardo Galeano read from this book before I’d read anything he’d written. That’s fitting enough for an introduction to a poet. But in this age, it happened through my earphones on a bright sunny day as I walked up Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh, listening to him being interviewed on All Things Considered, probably in 1993 when Walking Words was published.  I likely took a few more steps to try to find it at Squirrel Hill Books.

 Eduardo Galeano was a walking poet of the world. Born in Uruguay, his ancestors were Italian, Welsh, German and Spanish. He was an editor, journalist, novelist and poet. He wrote books like Walking Words, an amalgam of verse and tales from Latin American folk traditions, and uncompromising political books like Open Veins of Latin America. He was on death lists of several South American right wing governments. He also was considered the preeminent writer on international soccer, i.e. futbol. He died in 2015.

 As for the photo above, I’m the man this dog walks. His name is Howdy.

Update: RIP poet Robert Bly.  His death was announced Monday.