by George Salamon
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| Digital Painting of an old woman’s hands by Victoria Castro. |
I confronted my fondest memory of Thanksgiving,
not long ago, as the oven door was opened to baste
the turkey with yet another coating of bubbly pan
juice, that was to make the meat more tender, when
I heard the scratching of Cleo's paw at the kitchen
door shut to her, Cleo the golden retriever who knew
what she smelled and what she wanted, while the
humans were told not to didscuss the important things
they cared about—politics and race, the economy
and money, having it all or having nothing at all, the
state of the union and the abuse of the environment—
while the word important made my skin crawl I
thought of Cleo's paw and glanced over to the old
grandma, eyes shut and the sensitivity in her lapped
leathery hands, that feeling in the tips of her fingers
for all living things and understood the paw and her
fingers mattered and counted, and the rest belonged
with all that stuff we sought and still seek at the mall.
George Salamon is fond of the German word Fingerspitzengefuehl—the feeling at the tips of your fingers. It seems to him that we will lose it completely with all that clicking on the computer and smart phone. Have a lovely Thanksgiving weekend —anyway.