I am thankful for the acres in the inches
a poem makes on the page of its saying.
Like in this one, there is a large meadow
with a long table in the middle of it,
and seated at the table, every friend
and ancestor I could ever invoke
turns their faces to me and mouths the words
of a pop song from thirty years ago.
I am thankful that this image does not
unmake itself in a cloyed nostalgia.
Instead, I turn to you, my dear reader,
and say apple and flannel and snow
falling on the trees cut down to produce
parchment and draft and fraudulent treaty.
