Happy Thanksgiving To All The Beloveds Seen & Unseen

By Billy Collins, currently my favorite poet

The Gathering, a Thanksgiving Poem

Outside, the scene was right for the season,

heavy gray clouds and just enough wind

to blow down the last of the yellow leaves.

But the house was different that day,

so distant from the other houses,

like a planet inhabited by only a dozen people

with the same last name and the same nose

rotating slowly on its invisible axis.

Too bad you couldn't be there

but you were flying through space on your own asteroid

with your arm around an uncle.

You would have unwrapped your scarf

and thrown your coat on top of the pile

then lifted a glass of wine

as a tiny man ran across a screen with a ball.

You would have heard me

saying grace with my elbows on the tablecloth

as one of the twins threw a dinner roll across the room at the other.