Thanksgiving Prayer

My money melts like sugar in the shower when I don't sing Like a broken mockingbird that's put in pawn and traded in for diamond jewelry That shines but only briefly like the golden heart of fall Where the afternoons went quickly and your breath floats in the final beams of evening But I don't need dollars, pounds, or pesos to know I am rich I got people who allow themselves to love me and are insane enough to be loved And it's funny to think how much time we quietly spend apart You don't need to be a witness to have with-ness and I'm with you now, that's certain Civilize me from the wilderness of constant mercy Guarding a nursery of light That drifts inside me like a caravan of floating candles Trying not to capsize in the night Listen close to the dark And write down what it says Like its words are your own And dig a hole inside yourself and bury them there Thanksgiving Day is every day I write a song like this When I get down on all four paws and drag myself by my own jaws toward a feeling And a wise woman once told me no one has a single voice You're a chorus harmonizing or opposing voices rising Or a string of strangers waiting for their turn to speak So every day, just ask yourself, who would you rather be? A conductor or a cop or a night watchman slowly strolling an asylum Civilize me from the wilderness of constant mercy Cut like a kite string in a storm Drifts inside me like a caravan of floating candles Huddled in clusters to keep warm At the end of the hunt When you cut what you grow Will you have what you want? And feast when fear is fleeced from the sheets of a ghost? When you open your eyes To the sound of the dawn Peel a dream off your brain The film that takes the shape of the surface you dry it on Like a Thanksgiving prayer You can taste in the air