Hello and welcome to the thirteenth incarnation of the Thanksgiving Menu-Poem. This year the guest of honor is you! Yes, you sitting right there reading this, I do mean you. Hip, hip hurray and thank you for your kind support, your wonderful nature, your continued love for poetry, your willingness to open your life to weird little books like the ones we make at BlazeVOX! Even if this is your first time here or this is your thirteenth thanksgiving with us, hurray and thank you for joining in on the fun of a Menu-Poem and I hope you enjoy the celebration.

I would like to take this opportunity, on a day of giving thanks, to say a special thank you to everyone who was kind enough to be there for me during this tumultuous year. I had a major health scare over the spring and summer, which you can read about on the BX blog. That is now a thing of the past and I am happy and healthy once again. The outpouring of support was something that made my wife Donna and I feel just grand. So to say ‘Hurray, I am still alive’ and to say thank you all, this Menu-Poem is dedicated to you.

And one last bit of information for you before you begin reading. The cover art is a painting by Donna White. It is a portrait of our dear pumpkin from last year, as he was our 2013 Thanksgiving pumpkin. It was with us for over nine months and stayed around, until he turned to pulp in late August of this year. There is a poem for him in this grouping, which I do hope you enjoy. We do miss him terribly and his silly face.

Hurray and Happy Thanksgiving

Rockets, Geoffrey