Thanksgiving Day
candles and wine
a 3lb turkey
snow falling
through maple trees
a man and a woman…
__________
it’s her wedding tomorrow
she comes to me in the night
saying
“this
will have to last
for a long time”
__________
hoarfrost
10,000 apple drops
lie in the untended orchard
in the kitchen
a floor board
chirps
____________
the radiators bang
cod liver oil washed down
by fresh squeezed orange juice
he sits by the oven
warm on one side
shivering on the left
__________________
beyond the window, a bony dump*
as late as 1946
each classroom heated by a wood furnace
in summer
from the mine’s maw
cool scary air
____________________
a table set for two, a roast in the oven
the phone rings
in a white dress she goes out
whether by choice
or chance, she steps
into traffic
_________
storming out of her home
in night and blizzard
getting as far as the bachelor’s house
staying all winter
and never going back
having the last say
___________________
family barbecue
burnt offerings
the ‘chock’ of croquet balls
old, her eyesight gone
she sits apart
faintly smiling
_______________
six months missing
anonymous phone call
“your daughter’s at the train station”
crippled and mute
she rocks
the years away
____________
they’d nothing for Christmas that year
a cut spruce by the side of the road
the luck of a pheasant to run over
not a tale
to tell
at a New Age gathering
___________________
Video
Larry Kimmel reading cherita poems.
___________________
Larry Kimmel website 