Vox Populi
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BJ Ward: First Thanksgiving
A chair was never emptier than on the first Thanksgiving after my father died. For the first time, the grace had an echo careening from the canyon of the seat. Thanks for the final years of sobriety. Praise for the end of his suffering. But Lord, we’re not so grateful for the cancerous spot that was a pinprick on the balloon of his right lung. Our hands clasped— an emptiness between them, too. We tilted our necks down as if at a beheading. The empty seat was actually my old spot, and now I was at the head of the immense table.
BJ Ward’s books include Jackleg Opera: Collected Poems, 1990-2013 (North Atlantic Books, 2013).
Copyright 2020 BJ Ward
Vox Populi 
Beautiful. I tend to block out the firsts after losing grandparents, father, mother, aunts and uncles, a nephew, cousins, friends. I guess I am the matriarch. No pleasure in achieving that position. I do remember a thanksgiving in my grandfather’s house as we waited for calls about an uncle and an aunt, not spouses, who were in hospitals. My aunt died and came back that day.
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Your aunt died and came back to life?
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She had one of those light at the end of the tunnel experiences. I heard about it third hand. Never got to ask her about it.
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I love BJ Ward’s poems, and love this one — that subtle “spot” repeated twice in a completely different context yet so terribly connected… Bravo for this poem!
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Heartfelt
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