Place Poem: "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo

Plus some Thanksgiving place picks

I just returned from a weeklong trip to Paris with my beloved (for which I’m very thankful—both the trip and the beloved). As a result, I have an abbreviated holiday post today, but it’s one replete with Place Picks, as well as a favorite poem of mine that I think holds within it the spirit of Thanksgiving in a few important ways.

Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Source: The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1994)

Joy Harjo is a poet, performer, and writer of the Muskogee (Creek) Nation who is the author of one of my favorite collections of poetry (How We Became Human) and the editor of another (When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through). Until last year, Harjo was the United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to serve in that position since its establishment thirty years ago.

Poet Laureate of the United States Joy Harjo, June 6, 2019. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.

I don’t know if Harjo meant this poem to be a “Thanksgiving Poem” — perhaps, probably, this would not be a holiday she would choose to highlight, particularly given the now well-covered myths about “The First Thanksgiving”, and the obvious atrocities against Harjo’s ancestors that followed in the several hundred years since.

But I do think this poem, despite its understandably rough edges, gives us a lot to think about in considering the kitchen table¹ as a centering place for all the notable and not-so-notable human events that take place around it, under it, and atop it. It’s not always pretty. Yes, we give thanks, but we also gossip “recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers” at that table.

Harjo is possibly not being literal when she insists that we have “given birth” or “prepared parents for burial” on the same kitchen table. But it’s a startling and glorious way of showing gratitude for the vastness of events and emotions that emerge and mix beautifully when we come together with those we love. There are beginnings and ends, joys and sorrows, and in between, we eat (and eat, and eat, and eat, if stuffing and mashed potatoes are involved).

These days, it really does often feel like the world is ending. And there are worse places for it to end at the kitchen table, “eating of the last sweet bite” of life.

Music

To The Airport, by Nickel Creek (Apple/Spotify)

I’ve spent more time in airports over the last week or two than I have in a long time, and probably many of you have as well, or will in the next month. My wife and I arrived in Paris after a ten-hour red-eye flight, during which she got little sleep and I got none (neck pillows are not magic), made our way slowly through customs, and ended up in front of a French customs officer who was nothing less than delightful towards us. And on the way home, a booking snafu led to an extended trip to the check-in counter, where the Delta attendant spent a good long while making sure they fixed it so that we could get home in time for Thanksgiving.

I’m not saying airport and airline workers need a parade with balloons and floats like we see crash through Manhattan each November, but they at least deserve this masterpiece of a Nickel Creek song, which is an ode to—among others—those who work at airports and deal with all our horribly impatient selves, just trying, unbelievably and magically, to get where we need to go.

Sure this line is long
It's longer than my fuse
But you're just doing your job
And what a job you're doing

Look at us trying to move
To move through this world like it's our world

I think the reason I love this song, besides its moving and impeccable melodies, is that in its own way, it’s a song that breathes thankfulness for our fellow humans, even when we’re forced together in a situation we’d rather not be. I’m thankful for so very much this year, but here’s a hat tip to the TSA agents doing their darndest.

Visuals

I’ll keep it simple and go with a photo I took from the balcony as the sun was rising on one of the apartments we stayed in during our trip to Paris this past week. I’ll let the picture do the talking, except to say that it should make it obvious why I’m feeling so particularly thankful this year.

Substacks

It might be hard for you to believe, but there do exist Substacks other than mine, and I’m deeply thankful for many of them. I’ll share more over the coming months as Place Picks, but I’ll start with the one that first looped me into a the Substack community of “place writing” the endlessly interesting

Cosmographia

by

M. E. Rothwell

.

Rothwell has a variety of different types of posts, and I’ll feature a few examples of them below: his “Atlas Cultura” guides that put together full cultural experiences of particular places; photo and art galleries that capture place visually; and his addicting “Moleskine Notebooks”, in which Rothwell shares artwork, poetry, literature, antique maps, and some photography, all centered on a particular place. If you like learning about new places and want to read somebody more cultured and well-traveled than I, Rothwell is your man. Check some of my favorites out below:

Dickensian London

Split on Film

The Moleskine Notebooks: Svalbard

Happy Thanksgiving!

1. Note the “kitchen” rather than “dinner” table for those of us—most of us—who don’t have a separate dining room.