Time moves on with its usual nihilism,
mows us all down, jaw-droppingly insensate
to our preference for living.
Guns us down…

We’re caught in a universe
of collision and drift,
the long slow ripples
of the first Big Bang as
the universe breaks apart;
the closest galaxies smash together, then
those that are left scatter and flee one another
until each is alone and there’s only space,
and expansion expanding into itself,
an emptiness birthing itself,
and in the cosmic calendar
as it would exist then,
all humans ever did and were
will be a brief light
that flickers on and off again
one single day in the middle of the year,
remembered by nothing.

We exist now
in a fleeting bloom of life and knowing,
one finger-snap of frantic being,
and this is it.
The summary burst of life
is more bomb than bud.
These fecund times
are moving fast.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey, Orbit 13, p. 174

I know it is Thanksgiving.

You’d think I’d write something nostalgic, a muzzy remembering of Plymouth Rock, and the first Thanksgiving as if painted by Norman Rockwell. You know, a long table laden with produce, wild game, the tribal locals seated peaceably with the Pilgrims, who had disembarked a few months earlier from the Mayflower.

A review of William Bradford’s journal, indicates the extent of the suffering, the dying, and the deterioration of the comity with the local indigenous communities who already lived there. The first thanksgiving celebration in 1621 however was a time of feasting in company with the neighboring tribes people.

Things change is a bedrock principle no one can deny. A great deal has changed since that November of 1621 for us as Americans, all immigrants from many lands to this continent. We “discovered” and have developed this land beyond the limit. A great deal as changed for the indigenous tribes who lived here too. That is quite another story, not so complicated: we newcomers just took their land.

The quote that I featured is a deeper, many layered observation of the effect of the passage of time upon all of us. Not only “the Indians” but everyone has a ticket to be gunned down. Is this not a brilliant and shining metaphorical rendition of the 2nd law of thermo dynamics? That is, how energy always is on the move, dissipating, a movement toward disorder, to a less coherent and life supporting state. This is true of entire galaxies, of our solar system, and of you and I.

But, is it not majestic to observe, to take note of the “facts” and still to bow in reverent respect that this very moment, this very thanksgiving is a fleeting-bloom, the “it” which merits every bit of celebration that we can muster?

In the late afternoon of this day, I intend to raise a glass of white wine, to suggest we toast to recognize our good luck to be present. And to hold in memory friends, perhaps parents who, after making their contribution have passed on.

We exist now, that we may offer thanks.

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Why feature this tune by Whitesnake, Here I Go Again? I like the sensuous, gorgeous affirmation of life in the present, and the stone-cold honesty that the future is unknown. I like that. Enjoy! “Happy” thanksgiving!