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Thanksgiving Day [“Over the river and through the wood”]
By Lydia Maria Child
Over the river and through the wood,
    To grandfather's house we go;
         The horse knows the way
         To carry the sleigh
    Through the white and drifted snow....
Thanksgiving for Two
By Marjorie Saiser
The adults we call our children will not be arriving
with their children in tow for Thanksgiving.
We must make our feast ourselves,

slice our half-ham, indulge, fill our plates,
potatoes and green beans
carried to our table near the window.

We are the feast, plenty...
Slant
By Suji Kwock Kim
If the angle of an eye is all,
the slant of hope, the slant of dreaming, according to each life,
what is the light of this city,
light of Lady Liberty, possessor of the most famous armpit in the world,
light of the lovers...
Quaker Meeting, The Sixties
By Robin Becker
Seeing my friend’s son in his broad-brimmed hat
and suspenders, I think of the Quakers
who lectured us on nonviolent social action
every week when I was a child. In the classrooms
we listened to those who would not take up arms,
who objected, who...
The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day
By Lydia Maria Child

Over the river, and through the wood,
    To grandfather's house we go;
        The horse knows the way,
        To carry the sleigh,
    Through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,
    To grandfather's house away!
        We would not stop
        For doll or top,
    For 't is...
Perhaps the World Ends Here
By Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or...
Thanksgiving
By Edgar Albert Guest
Gettin’ together to smile an’ rejoice,
An’ eatin’ an’ laughin’ with folks of your choice;
An’ kissin’ the girls an’ declarin’ that they
Are growin’ more beautiful day after day;
Chattin’ an’ braggin’ a bit with the men,
Buildin’ the...
Signs of the Times
By Paul Laurence Dunbar
Air a-gittin' cool an' coolah,
   Frost a-comin' in de night,
Hicka' nuts an' wa'nuts fallin',
   Possum keepin' out o' sight.
Tu'key struttin' in de ba'nya'd,
   Nary step so proud ez his;
Keep on struttin', Mistah Tu'key,
   Yo' do' know whut...
The Pumpkin
By John Greenleaf Whittier
Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
Like...
The Gift Outright
By Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what...
Totem
By Eamon Grennan
All Souls’ over, the roast seeds eaten, I set
on a backporch post our sculpted pumpkin
under the weather, warm still for November.
Night and day it gapes in at us
through the kitchen window, going soft
in the head. Sleepwalker-slow, a black rash of...
Stomackes
By Albert Goldbarth
1

Yes. So we must reconnect
ideas of God, and the definitions of “liberty,”
and the psychology of our earliest models of governance, with
oyster peeces in barley beer & wheet,
chopt cod & venyson seethed in a blood broth,
hominy pottage, also...
The Thanksgivings
By Harriet Maxwell Converse
Translated By Harriet Maxwell Converse
We who are here present thank the Great Spirit that we are here
to praise Him.
We thank Him that He has created men and women, and ordered
that these beings shall always be living to multiply the earth.
We thank Him...
Yam
By Bruce Guernsey
The potato that ate all its carrots,
can see in the dark like a mole,

its eyes the scars
from centuries of shovels, tines.

May spelled backwards
because it hates the light,

pawing its way, padding along,
there in the catacombs.
Grandpa Vogt’s—1959
By Ben Vogt
The food is on the table. Turkey tanned
to a cowboy boot luster, potatoes mashed
and mounded in a bowl whose lip is lined
with blue flowers linked by grey vines faded
from washing. Everyone’s heads have turned
to elongate...
Zebra
By C. K. Williams
Kids once carried tin soldiers in their pockets as charms
against being afraid, but how trust soldiers these days
not to load up, aim, blast the pants off your legs?

I have a key-chain zebra I bought at the Thanksgiving fair....
The Garden of Proserpine
By Algernon Charles Swinburne
Here, where the world is quiet;
         Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
         In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
         A sleepy world...
Family Reunion
By Maxine Kumin
The week in August you come home,
adult, professional, aloof,
we roast and carve the fatted calf
—in our case home-grown pig, the chine
garlicked and crisped, the applesauce
hand-pressed. Hand-pressed the greengage wine.

Nothing is cost-effective here.
The...
[Posterity, this me is Now—]
By Dan Beachy-Quick
Posterity, this me is Now—
Record this Now. Virginia, 1705
Not always settled. I am settled
Over history’s yellow pages, blank
Pages, must I write my old dark
Thoughts: Does time mask or unmask
Mind? This sweet almond now
In my mouth as in their mouths
Then, sweet...
A Thanksgiving to God, for his House
By Robert Herrick
Lord, Thou hast given me a cell
         Wherein to dwell,
A little house, whose humble roof
         Is weather-proof:
Under the spars of which I lie
         Both soft, and dry;
Where Thou my chamber for to ward
         Hast set a guard...

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