Maggie's First Thanksgiving

Biggleswade, England
November 28, 2019

Here it’s just Thursday 

in the restored brick cottage 

out back of Shortmead House 

on the northern fringe of Biggleswade. 

After a week of grey and rain 

the pocked lane is laced with puddles 

down past the football pitch. I slip 

into six layers and trudge into town 

to stock up on sweet potatoes. I buy 

a box of brown sugar, a vial of vanilla, 

pecans and coconut for the casserole 

your great-grandma used to make. 

Tonight our feast is beans over toast,

jacket potatoes sprinkled with cheddar, 

chased with an ale and a savouring 

of sticky toffee pudding and cream.

Tradition can wait until Saturday 

when Heike comes up from London 

and your Mimi swings by to join momma 

and daddy, Gramma and Grandpa 

crowded around the kitchen table.
Late in the night you’ll nurse milk 

fortified with cornbread and casseroles, 

flavoured with pumpkin and pecan pies.  

Nothing says Thanksgiving like expats 

offered food on a late Fall night 

to share in the warmth of newborn life 

and family that spans two shores.

Thanks to a saint from south Georgia –
a Biggleswade Thanksgiving feast 

donated to the new parents 

by Georgia expat Sara Miller.

Shortmead Lane, Biggleswade, England

Restoration

When the Divine dreams of a new Eden, 

    creation remakes the world. 

Streams of contingencies interweave 

    as causation braids a trillion threads: 

An orbit elongates, eruptions abate, 

    neighboring stars go nova, or don’t. 

An ocean expands and currents subside.

    A killer comet veers wide of its mark. 

Then in the shifting course of time 

    there comes a confluence  

when dreams condense to creation 

    and Gaia rises to cleanse the world. 

She summons the storm clouds, 

    unleashes the knife-edged winds, 

breaches the levied flood plains, 

    and sweeps the jettied coast. 

She packs the high snow fields 

    till mountain peaks glisten 

and glaciers scrape the jagged slopes, 

    carve passes, and water the plains. 

She cracks the concrete ruins. 

    Wastelands revert to meadows, 

crumbled tarmac blossoms with flowers, 

    and culverts run clear. 

Southern seas are ringed with reefs 

    and Arctic waters teem with krill. 

Forests shade artesian springs 

    and grasslands cover blackened soils. 

The tree of life grows wild. 

    Tribes of leviathans roam the oceans, 

clans of behemoths patrol the ice, 

    gray sage-birds weave epics on tropical nights.

The world is a wilderness dotted with parks 

    where Earth-keepers tend garden reserves 

and nurseries for emerging minds 

     that will bless a billion years. 

Thomas Cole - The Garden of Eden