Kansha Sai
That’s Japanese for Thanksgiving,
“The festival of gratitude.”
Here I am in Japan
at the end of November
alone, giving thanks.
It was a poet that said “Alone is a stone.”
Today the stones are shimmering
under a fading fall sun
and to be alone allows the landscape of memory
to stir under this wizened sky.
My son was once afraid of the sky,
he never wanted to look up
thinking he would be swallowed.
Today, I am thankful
he has gotten over that fear.
Thankful for much on this day
when bombs are going off elsewhere.
But there are always bombs going off,
and we carry our own inner grenades
waiting to explode into a sullen sky.
Yet, I remain grateful:
For sons, for stones that shimmer,
for an ebbing autumn,
knowing that alone, I am together
with so many who are like scattered seeds
ripening into buds and waiting to bloom
in all the places I am not.
*
My Son’s Sweatshirt
Father and son come by,
tell me they are going camping.
into woods, bear country, past scorpion rock
to black lakes carpeted with lichen stones visible only by toe-touch,
and I worry about my son’s pearl tipped toes
scraping all things jagged in dark pools having no bottom.
I tell him what to pack for this time with his father,
remind my son that he was named for survival,
I open the drawer where he keeps his warm clothes.
The car disappears into a single lane leading to thinner air,
when I can no longer see the trail of exhaust,
I turn back into the house
and see my son’s sweatshirt—forgotten.
Its rumpled form, deserted by the body of my son,
this gift, I continuously give to his father—
a father who I hope remembers
that in the woods, there are no sonatas to perfect,
and long division is just a maze of Manzanita bush.
I hang up the sweatshirt,
its collar pinned to a hook,
tonight my son will know the cold
and the sound of high mountain wind,
the only whisper tucking him in.
*
Laurie Kuntz has published two poetry collections (The Moon Over My Mother’s House, Finishing Line Press and Somewhere in the Telling, Mellen Press), and three chapbooks (Talking Me Off The Roof, Kelsay Books, Simple Gestures, Texas Review Press, and Women at the Onsen, Blue Light Press). Simple Gestures, won the Texas Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, and Women at the Onsen won the Blue Light Press Chapbook Contest. Her 6th poetry book, That Infinite Roar, will be published by Gyroscope Press at the end of 2023. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net Prize. Her work has been published in Gyroscope Review, Roanoke Review, Third Wednesday, One Art, Sheila Na Gig, and many other literary journals. She currently resides in Florida, where everyday is a political poem waiting to be written. Visit her at: https://lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com/home-1
