A Thanksgiving Feast of Poems
“There is no way,” Mary Oliver writes, “to be / sufficiently grateful for the gifts we are / given, no way to speak the Lord’s name / often enough.” And yet: this is the season when we try — and poetry can help. At their best, poems can help us say what can’t sufficiently be said, and feel what can’t fully be felt.
With this in mind, here’s a feast of poems for Thanksgiving, each one as lovely as the last:
From Mary Oliver: “The Gift”
From Joy Harjo: “Perhaps the World Ends Here”
From Anne Sexton: “Welcome Morning”
From Robert Hayden: “Those Winter Sundays”
From Wendell Berry: “Prayer after Eating”
From Alice Walker: from The Color Purple
From Jane Kenyon: “Otherwise”
From Andrea Gibson: “For the Days I Stop Wanting a Body”
From Ted Kooser: “A Jar of Buttons”
From Thornton Wilder: from Emily’s soliloquy in “Our Town”
From Tom Hennen: “The Life of a Day”
From Lucille Clifton: “the lesson of the falling leaves”
From Rumi: “The Guest House”
From Danusha Laméris: “Small Kindnesses”
From Baron Wormser: “A Quiet Life”
From Denise Levertov: “The Avowal”
From Fred Rogers: “One Silent Minute”
From E. E. Cummings: “[i thank You God for most this amazing]”
From Billy Collins: “As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse”
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Happy Thanksgiving!
The SALT Team