Thanksgiving

I'm in Brooklyn with my in-laws today. This is the first Thanksgiving I've ever spent without my mother and sisters. But it's appropriate that it be in New York for this holiday, because while two years ago I resolved never again to take for granted my family, my friends, this country or the city I'd like to consider my hometown (I was born in Chelsea but grew up elsewhere)--for whatever reason I'm far better at keeping that resolution when it comes to New York City than anything else.

So in that spirit, and because it's easier to write about places than people....

(this is elided from a longer poem I wrote not long ago, so it's somewhat choppy.)

We were born in Mount Sinai, Bellevue, St. Luke’s,
Kings County, Bronx-Lebanon, our parents’ apartments.
Grew up in Washington Heights, Park Slope, Brownsville,
Flushing, Mott Haven, Chelsea, Rockaway;
played in the shadows of skyscrapers,
were rocked to sleep by the 7 train, and
slowly awoke to the mysteries around us.

Or perhaps we came later, from across the Hudson,
or across the plains, or across the oceans.
From Hoboken, New Haven, Des Moines,
Montgomery, Albequerque, Tacoma.
From Hanoi, Damascus, Delhi, Freetown,
Santo Domingo, Pristina, Kuala Lumpur.
From lands unseen, and
cities unheard of, we came here.

To the “island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,”
ringed by eight bridges, four tunnels, and
three rivers that no one swims in.
To “Brooklyn of ample hills,” borough
of brownstones and boulevards. To the Bronx,
re-emerging from its own ashes, and
to Queens, to the rows of small, neat
adjoining houses with tiny backyards.
To this strange glittering city, that we
love so dearly but will never fully know.

II.
Those towers were our landmarks, our offices,
our eyesores, our way to orient ourselves
in the maze of lower Manhattan....

Most of us were lucky. No one we knew had died,
and so we were free to mourn our lesser griefs.
We felt petty for this, with so many dead,
but found that we missed the buildings themselves,
like old acquaintances who had greeted us
nightly and were suddenly gone.

It was only then that we fully understood
how much we needed this place, all of it:
our small overpriced apartments, with unpredictable
thermostats and four-square-foot kitchens.
Our crowded sidewalks and squares, our bodegas,
our subway stations, our friends’ places, our museums.
Our collections of takeout menus, our pigeons,
our mildly insane cabbies, our nightly lullaby
of distant sirens. Our graceful spires of steel
and stone, and our stunted gingko trees.

Our city. Our birthplace or our promised land,
our capital of the world, our hometown.

("Island sixteen miles long, solid founded" and "Brooklyn of ample hills" are quotes from Walt Whitman.)

Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are.

Comments

[Edward]

Welcome Home Katherine...and thanks for the lovely sentiments.

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Frank Quist (NL)]

Happy thanksgiving!

And good luck with your great weblog.