A Kansas poet, Wyatt Townley has written a number of fine poems about the swift and relentless passage of time, one of the great themes of the world’s poetry, and I especially like this one. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Finding the Scarf

The woods are the book

we read over and over as children.

Now trees lie at angles, felled

by lightning, torn by tornados,

silvered trunks turning back

to earth. Late November light

slants through the oaks

as our small parade, father, mother, child,

shushes along, the wind searching treetops

for the last leaf. Childhood lies

on the forest floor, not evergreen

but oaken, its branches latched

to a graying sky. Here is the scarf

we left years ago like a bookmark,

meaning to return the next day,

having just turned our heads

toward a noise in the bushes,

toward the dinnerbell in the distance,

toward what we knew and did not know

we knew, in the spreading twilight

that returns changed to a changed place.

We celebrated a quiet Thanksgiving with my father-in-law Thursday. And though we usually wait till the first week of December to decorate for the holidays, we decided to take advantage of an extra set of hands (two sets, actually, as my mother-in-law joined us Saturday) to put the Christmas tree up. We broke out the eggnog, put the Florida/Florida State college football game on TV and went to town.

I’d say that was a pretty good start to the holiday season.

How was your week?

“What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets.  I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?”

—Erma Bombeck

May your Thanksgiving be filled with happiness and all the treats that spell “holiday” for you.

Thanks again to you and to everyone who has visited and/or commented on the blog in the past three years!

Here’s a delightful poem by Douglas S. Jones about a bicycle rider sharing his bike with a spider. Jones lives in Michigan and spiders live just about everywhere. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Centrifugal

The spider living in the bike seat has finally spun

its own spokes through the wheels.

I have seen it crawl upside down, armored

black and jigging back to the hollow frame,

have felt the stickiness break

as the tire pulls free the stitches of last night’s sewing.

We’ve ridden this bike together for a week now,

two legs in gyre by daylight, and at night,

the eight converting gears into looms, handle bars

into sails. This is how it is to be part of a cycle—

to be always in motion, and to be always

woven to something else.