Inviting Obama for Thanksgiving Dinner

I no longer remember much of etiquette
from reading White Gloves and Party Manners,
so when Obama doesn’t come to our house
for Thanksgiving dinner, I needn’t worry
that I’ve forgotten how to address a former president
in an informal setting. I do, however, remind my kids
that if Obama were sitting with us,
they would want to remember to put their napkins
in their laps. They do.
And you probably don’t want to lick the serving spoon,
I add, as it goes from the cranberry sauce
into an eager mouth. And we don’t talk about farting.
The whole time Obama isn’t eating mashed potatoes with us,
we wonder what he is eating with his family
and what they are talking about,
and if he might not just accept an invitation
to our home for dinner. If he did,
we agree we would refrain from using the knife
with the butter dish to butter our own bread.
And, uncertain how to address him,
we’d just ask him personally how he’d like be called.
I’d like to believe that Obama might actually show up.
He’d knock at the door in his elegant and humble way,
no fanfare, holding a side dish of roasted brussels sprouts,
and we’d listen as he told us what he’s up to these days.
As it is, it’s kinda fun when he doesn’t show up
and we act like ourselves. I eat my green beans
with my fingers—they taste better that way.
My daughter plays with the candlewax.
Sometimes, I lick my plate.

*

Grace

Though the world is dented and dinged
and scuffed and scorned,
we trim the beans and peel the potatoes,

and the kitchen is warm and full
of laughter. We hum as we work
and break into scraps of song.

All day our hands are joyful
as they prepare the meal to come.
Even now, there are wars and battles,

not all of them fought with guns,
some waged intimately in our thoughts,
our scraped up hearts. And still,

this scent of apple pie, sweetening
as it bakes, this inner insistence
that love is not only possible,

it is every bit as real as our fear.
Whether the host has brought
out his best wine and his best crystal glasses

or water in chipped clay cups,
there is every reason to be generous,
to serve not only our family, our friends, ourselves,

but also those we don’t yet know how to love
and those parts of ourselves we have tried
to keep separate. Tonight,

the host has hidden bait in the dinner—
we all are caught. Scent of sage,
scent of mushrooms and cream. The bite of cranberry.

Never mind the potatoes cooked too long.
Blessings seep into all the imperfect places,
even if you can’t name the blessings—

consider them secret ingredients.
The point is not to understand the feast,
but to eat, to eat it together.

*

What the Sky Knows

Before the feast,
I slip outside
into the rose glow
of evening and
talk to my loves
who no longer
walk this earth,
and I thank them
for being in my life
and I cry and cry.
How is it possible
at the same time
to hold so much grief
and so much gratefulness?
And the sky holds me
and the rooftops, the
streets and the fields,
the factories and forests,
it holds it all, holds
what is most beautiful,
holds what is most foul.
It doesn’t try to change
anything. Like that,
it seems to say
as it turns a deeper
rose. Like that.

*

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is poet laureate for Evermore. She co-hosts the Emerging Form podcast. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her newest collection is The Unfolding. One-word mantra: Adjust.