rightness and loss bound perfectly together

Thanksgiving ’13

I feel the absence of those we’ve lost to this moment:

of parent and brother, and friend who have died,

of family whose own journeys take them 

somewhere else other than here for now,

those today at the Thanksgiving table

find joy in each other and the food,

and still within me flash after-images of earlier Thanksgivings,

and I remember, and I wish I knew even more of the forbearers,

I ache to remember the best of those who have gone before,

the struggles, the will, the doubts, the hopes:

how they found answers to all the great questions

that must be dealt with just to endure,

life is a game with only hints of directions,

we’re alone, and maybe we find another,

and maybe the other is who we need,

and, if we’re even luckier, that who we are is who the other needs,

we have a child and we must intuit how to parent,

driven by love and guided by the heart’s and the intellect’s best guesses,

we have to act and find the paths that are best

with only hints as to how and where to go in trackless woods,

and when we’re home at Thanksgiving,

we can feel rightness and loss bound up perfectly together.



by Henry H. Walker

November 28, ’13
Images courtesy of Google Images