Thanksgiving Spirits 2009

Before the initial first signs of decorations and ads becoming a torrential flood and the anxiety of will there be a Black Friday in this recession year darken the skies like an impending thunderstorm, here's hoping that all of us have a momnet to pause and reflect and be grateful for what we have spiritually, physically and emotionally and our ties with friends and family and after so thanking, give of our selves. A very Happy Thanksgiving from the Alaskan Poet: Please feel free to share the following over Thanksgiving:
Thanksgiving 2009
Some Thanksgivings when the nation is way ahead of Friday black,
Dollars flowing and the cash registers chimes do not lack,
So easy to surround with the Thanksgiving portrait of dollars baste,
Family and friends waiting for the never ending taste
Of the bounties of a never ending, always expanding fruitful earth,
With caloric dances and appreciation in full on birth.
Grateful is so easy when it’s a chorus of seconds and thirds,
Only weighty concern is too many leftovers from such a massive bird,
And whether there will be enough time to relax and digest,
The last mincemeat pie and still put the dishes and kitchen to rest.
Like sailing a sloop in gentle seas with the wind a beam,
So easy to give thanks for another year of the American Dream.
If perchance the green leaves of profit past have left the accounts bare,
With the frost of foreclosures and the chills of layoffs now in the air,
The TARP spread with such hope to keep away the red rain,
May have now failed to protect those amber waves of grain.
Wonders of whether the Baby Boomers may have seen the high water mark,
Lights on the city on the hill now dimming slowly into the dark?
Or is it a time to cherish more the love of families and friends
Than the baubles and trinkets left behind when the lease must end?
Or is it a time to cherish the right to worship if one should chose,
Or to cherish the right to elect, only by ballot can one lose,
Or is it time to give and share with others to bring back the village sense?
To cherish the lack of drama and of chasing of selfish dollars too intense?
We may be wobbling, woozy, and shivering in pangs of self doubt,
But if we have our families and friends, despair must prepare for the rout.
Thanksgiving is not the size of the bird but the size of the love you wish to share
If the spirit is right, if the spirit is sound, there is nothing we cannot repair.
Happy Thanksgiving, we have before and will now pass this test
Spirit and faith sound and right, we, family and friends are truly blessed.
© 11/23/2009
Michael P. Ridley