Featuring cherita!


November 26, 2010

Poetry Friday--"That Evening At Dinner"

I hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving dinner! That's about all we can ask for at family gatherings, a little pleasantness. So often family gatherings degrade into an application of guilt, recriminations, shouting matches, and other unpleasantnesses.

David Ferry has a poem, "That Evening At Dinner," the ending of which sums up yesterday's dinner for many (just substitute turkey for the fish):
The dinner was delicious, fresh greens, and reds,
And yellows, produce of the season due,
And fish from the nearby sea; and there were also
Ashes to be eaten, and dirt to drink.

Read the rest here.
I hope you don't think that on the basis of my selection for today, that I had one of those types of Thanksgiving dinners. I DID NOT! This year we did something a little unusual. For a change we didn't drive from New Hampshire to the metropolitan New York area on Wednesday. What a blessed relief not to have to sit in traffic for six hours!

Then, yesterday morning, we took part in the Feaster Five road race in Andover, Massachusetts. I'm not a runner, so another family member and I walked, but several in the family did run.


About 5,000 in front of us, and 5,000 behind us!



We made it! 5K! It took a wee bit longer than we would have liked--it was about 10 minutes before we got to the "start" point after all the runners began, then we had a few tie-ups when ambulances and fire trucks had to get by during the race.






Proof positive we finished--everyone who crossed the finish line got a Table Talk pie!







After the race, rather than stuff ourselves with turkey, mashed potatoes, and ten thousand side dishes, we had a Thanksgiving brunch with a frittata, coffee cake, and fresh fruit. Not too much food, so we avoided the "please let me puke" phase of the usual dinner.

For us, a smaller, differently celebrated Thanksgiving was a welcomed change!

Despite it being a holiday weekend, the Poetry Friday Round-Up is still being held. Our host on this "Black Friday" is Jone at Check It Out.

Update: Look at this awesome time lapse video of the race:


© Lussier Photography

4 comments:

  1. That poem is just stunning. Great poets have that ability, to feel deeply and also tell a truth.

    ..."Like others, though, she had
    Survived her childhood somehow."

    Thank you so much for showing me this poem. There is a T-Day race in the vicinity called The Turkey Trot. Many people wear costumes while they do the run. It is often bitterly cold. It speaks to the human spirit that a person would run on such a day dressed as a sock monkey.

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  2. Yes, it was cold yesterday, too, about 31 degrees when we met up, but, that didn't stop the young man who dressed in a grass skirt (shorts underneath), two coconuts across his chest, and that was it!

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  3. Thanks for this, Diane--I generally believe that a poem should say what it has to in under a page, but I make exceptions where warranted! What fine closing lines.

    It's good to find new traditions. Glad you enjoyed yours so much!

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  4. Thankfully, I've never had one of "those" Thanksgiving dinners, and I'm all about inventing new traditions. Still trying to get my head around receiving a free pie at the end of a 5K!!!

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