Thanksgiving

Tonight I made a Thanksgiving wreath at the senior center. We started with fresh balsam speckled with blue berries. Ferry bells. I didn’t know the name of anything. A woman whose face was stretched like cling wrap over a plate told me to use the lotus pods as my focal point. Once I saw lotus flowers floating in a pond in Shanghai. A man there drew a poem on the ground with water and a calligraphy brush. He wrote Can you coax your mind from its wandering. Then the words disappeared. All around us, people danced. They’d hung their purses and their groceries on the branches of trees. Someone brought a boom box. Women danced with women, women danced with men. At the senior center, women wearing twinsets and pearls manipulated their Thanksgiving wreaths. They poked wires through the lotus pods. The instructor cautioned against using fruit as it would rot. Everyone picked out dried flowers instead.