Thanksgiving Morning

Thanksgiving Morning

Margot Fleck

She walks above the bones

of Squakeag and Pocumtuck,

through meadows replete

with arrowheads, pestles

and shards of implements. The sky

is corduroy, opaque. The stubble in the fields,

ocher and dry. The crows cease their scavenging

to scold, “Sylence, go home.”

Home. Where memories stalk, as men

stalk crows with bounties on their head. Memories

of fathers and uncles at war with Indians

and a cousin, a captive returned from Canada,

his head pierced by a tomahawk and forever afraid

to fork the winter hay in the darkened barn alone. Memories of her aunts who birthed in too distant homes and tore too wide, who were lowered into graves beside their children

drained by dysentery or strangled by diphtheria.

How easily we scavenge our minds

to glean aboriginal memories

of dread and threat.

Margot W. Fleck

for more of Margot’s work check: www.margotwfleck.com Also: I will soon be printing a collection of thirteen of her Sylence poems.