Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Thanksgiving week.  This afternoon the table linens turn in the dryer, the glasses and plates and silverware sit washed and ready.  I have shopped, and will shop again.  Ryan and I have been near-vegetarians for two years now (eating only some fish from time to time, but no animals) so this holiday finds us getting creative with vegetables.  I have pounds of parsnips, and a bouquet of long green stalks of leeks, and a bag of red potatoes, ready to be chopped and cooked.  I am going to poach some salmon and bake some haddock, for ourselves and for the near relations who will soon visit our table.  I am planning a spice cake with apples, a big batch of cranberry sauce from local fresh cranberries, and a casserole of stuffing.  Ryan is making biscuits from his grandmother's recipe.  And pie.  There will be pie.  I feel full already.  Too full perhaps.  Honestly, the day looms, and I worry, about all sorts of things far beyond my attempts at preparation.  I don't need to talk about any of that here, however.  Gratitude for my ordinarily quiet life pools like still November lake water.  Gratitude for books anchors me, as always.  My winter reading project continues.  I keep wandering through the forest of Frank O'Hara's poetry, not ready to leave yet, following his lines as if they might actually lead somewhere, a path to something real.  But they are real, written first by a real person, then collected in real books, which we can touch and hold like the hands of friends.  They make me think and feel.  They wake me up and surprise me, and offer solace, no matter what.  They make me laugh.  For all of that I am far beyond grateful.

Snippets from Poems Retrieved (City Lights reprint).

(p.xxii):

"I see my vices
 lying like abandoned works of art
 which I created so eagerly
 to be worldly and modern
 and with it"

(p.190):

"There's nothing more beautiful
 than knowing something is going
 to be over"

(p.204):

"How wonderful it is that the Park Avenue Viaduct is being rehabilitated
 I wish I were too"

And a few more, from Lunch Poems (City Lights reprint).

(p.54):

"I can't even find a pond small enough
 to drown in without being ostentatious"

(p.62):

"the soft air wraps me like a swarm it's raining and I have
 a cold I am a real human being with real ascendancies
 and a certain amount of rapture..."

Books remain.  The holidays come and go, family likewise, all of us real human beings.  We sit together for brief hours then scatter again and return to the regular round of our individual lives.  We hold hands around the table first though, and regard each other with the fondness built on the foundation of years spent together, long ago.

Twilight now, and I have warm clean laundry to fold, and a fire to light.  Hodge is asking for his supper, early.  Two books arrived in the mail today, they look good!  Thanks for sharing a quiet hour before the busy times begin in earnest, this week.  Blessings on all our tables.