Peter Holsapple

Welcome to the Thanks Giving Feast of Words.

When I called for thankful-themed writing, I had no idea the response would be so swift and rich. I'm delighted with the offerings. We'll be feasting all week!

We'll start out with two pieces, from Ann Staley and Cathy Murphy.

To set a thankful tone, poet and teacher Ann Staley, from Corvallis, Oregon, shares an Inuit Song:

And I thought over again
My small adventures
As with a shore-wind I drifted out
In my kayak
And thought I was in danger,

My fears

Those small ones

That I thought so big

For all the vital things

I had to get and to reach

And yet, there is only

One great thing,

The only thing:

To live to see in huts and on journeys

The great day that dawns,

And the light that fills the world.

Our next piece comes from Cathy Murphy, a teacher living in Sacramento, California.

Gifted
Gifts given, over a two-week span, to a first grade teacher for her birthday

Golden gumball machine rings
A sparkly silver pencil (sans eraser)
Half a Pop Tart
Bits of red string
A broken plastic Easter egg
Coloring book pages, some blank, some not, some addressed to former best friends
Misspelled notes and pencil drawings
Shiny beads, hair bands
A single white frosted animal cracker wrapped in a used paper napkin
Two Skittles, half an eraser
A note enclosed in a partial envelope wrapped in torn paper and tied with cassette tape
Plastic gemstones, a friendship bracelet
Playground pebbles with flecks of shiny granite
A penny, a ruler, a caterpillar
Books with torn pages and crayon scribbles
A still-warm slice of sweet potato pie
Two inches of pale blue ribbon with three navy blue stars
An old stuffed rabbit with one button eye and no tail
A fuzzy green Lifesaver, a broken purple crayon
Two princess dominoes, a grocery store gift card
A plastic flower, a silk flower
Four purple and two pink roses from Gaby’s backyard
Part of a homemade burrito, teeth marks on one end, beans oozing out the other
A dried out green marker
Three strings of Mardi gras beads
A plastic refrigerator magnet, maroon, capital Q
Quarter-inch diamond-shaped pieces of mirrored plastic
A used white eraser with the initials AM
Two sheets of car stickers
A song
Salvaged fuzzy-backed princess stickers
A plastic flower bead, a carrot
Three tangerines, four apples, a bruised pear
The embossed flower cut off the top left corner of a check
And a deck of 49 playing cards

— Cathy Murphy

Would you like to share? Please send your poems, paragraphs, prayers and praises by email to dcm@drewmyron.com. In this feast of words, more is merry.