A Deep River Year
 November 26, 2014

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I am glad for it. We will gather family members—and maybe some others—around the table and reflect on this gift, which is life. Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday—perhaps more than any other—because it is just about being together. It is also a time to feel the tender spirits around us of those who have shared their lives with us. As we pause to say grace, they linger at the edges of the room, their voices whispering through our silence, saying things like “Did you put sausage in the stuffing?” and “Look how big your granddaughter is already!” and “I love you.”

When I was a little boy I would awaken on Thanksgiving morning to the aroma of roasting turkey wafting through the house, because my mother and father had risen before dawn to stuff the bird and lace it up for the oven. This was a ritual of love. So we will rise on Thursday—though not quite so early—and repeat that ritual for another year, and my mother and father will be there, and not. Yesterday we planted daffodil and tulip bulbs in the cold earth, perhaps the last mild day before a winter storm arrives today. This, too, is a ritual bound to our Thanksgiving feast--of planting and harvest, of making a pact with those who have been and those who are yet to come. We live in memory and hope. For that, we are grateful.

A Song to Slip from the Heart

Go there
 in the sullen days,
 when the heart is dark as November
 and there is no respite from the cold.
 Go there,
 and find some little thing
 to hold in your shaking hand,
 one last red leaf,
 or a blue feather from a morning bird,
 or an acorn with some life in it.
 Lift it up to the sky,
 which may be silent and heavy with clouds,
 but it is high, and worth seeing,
 for you must look up if you would be a priest
 who bears this offering.
 And then you will wait for the song
 to slip from your heart,
 where you have locked it up,
 a song that remembers
 what it is to be a child running in grass,
 a song of seasons and snow and rain,
 a song of laughter and tender voices.
 Suddenly it will be there,
 and if you have ever known love,
 known some sweet kiss or felt arms around,
 or felt the stronger, stranger love
 like a flame tearing at the darkness,
 or a wounded forgiveness,
 then this song will be a worthy anthem,
 and true as leaf or feather or seed.
 And then light will settle around you,
 and in you a joy will take its root,
 and you will be saved by this one,
 truest, deepest prayer,
 lifted up, like a wild and holy incantation:
 Thank you. Thank you.

--Timothy Haut, November 26, 2014