‘T was just this time last year I died.
I know I heard the corn,
When I was carried by the farms, –
It had the tassels on.

I thought how yellow it would look
When Richard went to mill;
And then I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.

I thought just how red apples wedged
The stubble’s joints between;
And carts went stooping round the fields
To take the pumpkins in.

I wondered which would miss me least,
And when Thanksgiving came,
If father’d multiply the plates
To make an even sum.

And if my stocking hung too high,
Would it blur the Christmas glee,
That not a Santa Claus could reach
The altitude of me?

But this sort grieved myself, and so
I thought how it would be
When just this time, some perfect year,
Themselves should come to me.

One day is there of the series
Termed Thanksgiving day,
Celebrated part at table,
Part in memory.

Neither patriarch nor pussy,
I dissect the play;
Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
Reflex holiday.

Had there been no sharp subtraction
From the early sum,
Not an acre or a caption
Where was once a room,

Not a mention, whose small pebble
Wrinkled any bay, –
Unto such, were such assembly,
‘T were Thanksgiving day.

One day is there of the series
Termed Thanksgiving day,
Celebrated part at table,
Part in memory.

Neither patriarch nor pussy,
I dissect the play;
Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
Reflex holiday.

Had there been no sharp subtraction
From the early sum,
Not an acre or a caption
Where was once a room,

Not a mention, whose small pebble
Wrinkled any bay, –
Unto such, were such assembly,
‘T were Thanksgiving day.

At the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Advance-Titan, Tyler Maas imagines a date with Emily Dickinson.

Tyler arrives dressed in “Zubaz pants and vintage Green Bay Packers T-shirt”, and is burdened by a little too much knowledge about “the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . . . [and] . . . BSB and N’Sync . . . [and] . . . [t]he XFL . . . [and] . . . Darva Conger . . . [and] . . . gigapets and tamigachis”, but he tries, goodness knows. He even lets her know that he thinks “her poem “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun” is pretty badass.”

Alas, Tyler doesn’t consummate his love for Dickinson; “[t]here will be no kiss, no sweat-soaked linen or hearty pancake breakfast. No words shall weave a poem in my likeness nor kids bear my name.”

Not a bad little story for a slow Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving read . . .