Thanksgiving Like a Planet

"End of Season" ~ Photo by Cate
The Gathering

Outside, the scene was right for the season,
Heavy gray clouds and just enough wind
To blow down the last of the yellow leaves.

But the house was different that day,
So distant from the other houses,
Like a planet inhabited by only a dozen people

With the same last name and the same nose
Rotating slowly on its invisible axis.
Too bad you couldn't be there.

But you were flying through space on your own asteroid
With you arm around an uncle.
You would have unwrapped your scarf

And thrown your coat on top of the pile
Then lifted a glass of wine
As a tiny man ran across the screen with a ball.

You would have heard me
Saying grace with my elbows on the tablecloth
As one of the twins threw a dinner roll
Across the room at the other.

by Billy Collins

Thanksgiving at the Little Planets' Table
~ Cartoon by Steve Breen ~

Post Mother's Day

Some New Love at Lovely Things

Posted previously, but nice to be reminded:

I wish for for you
some new love
at lovely things,
some new forgetfulness
at teasing things,
some higher pride
in the praising things,
some sweeter peace
from the hurrying things,
and some closer fence
from the worrying things."

~ John Ruskin ~

Along with this past Sunday's post "Picture of Home" (scroll down or click)
please enjoy additional selected readings in keeping with Mother's Day
from Billy Collins, Tina Fey, Naomi Shihab Nye,
and others on my

CURRENT FORTNIGHTLY BLOG POST:
~ Post Mother's Day ~

Thanks for reading
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony

The Miniature & The Gigantic

"Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic,
at last have some small works of art,
some short poems, short pieces of music
[. . .] some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things
in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?"
~ Elizabeth Bishop ~
`
Painting of Breakfast by Jessie Willcox Smith
"Breakfast Perspective
you can bet that if oatmeal was bigger than us, he said,
we'd be breakfast cereal in a minute"

Brian Andreas (b. 1956)
American writer, painter, sculptor, publisher,
and creator of StoryPeople

*********************************

Some Days
Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs,
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds,
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face

Billy Collins (b. 1941)
Poet Laureate of the United States, 2001 - 2003
New York State Poet, 2004-2006

***********************************

I find this topic so intriguing -- the dollhouse, the little dolls, the shift in perspective from the miniature to the gigantic -- I could write a book about it.

Oh, that's right, I already did:

CREATED IN OUR IMAGE:
THE MINIATURE BODY OF THE DOLL AS SUBJECT AND OBJECT

You can read more about my book
on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

"For our very humanity is in our urge
to make magic with images [& miniatures]."
~ Erica Jong ~
from her novel
Parachutes & Kisses (62)