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With My Grandson on Thanksgiving, a poem by Jeffrey Owen Pearson


With My Grandson on Thanksgiving
by Jeffrey Owen Pearson

He says he is grateful for his father.
His father is dead and he is grateful for him.
He doesn’t talk about him
except from those moments that seem to come from dreams.
I remember him, too, every day. Some days I cry.
My father used to measure everything,
but I have no measure to reach him.
The boy has no measure other than gratitude.
Some places are pure. Pools so clear
we will never understand. Our first meal.
The last. Grateful for the bounty our hands planted in the earth
and the earth gave back. A plate at the dark end of the table
for the absent father. Father. The boy
is grateful. Father. I am.



From Jeffrey Owen Pearson: “ 'With My Grandson on Thanksgiving' began in a circle of friends and family. I was devastated by my grandson's gratitude for his father, it was such a pure and ethereal sentiment. His dad's birthday is the last day of November.”