Thanksgiving

Billy Collins

The thing about the huge platter 
of sliced celery, broccoli florets, 
and baby tomatoes you had arranged 
to look like a turkey with its tail fanned out 
was that all our guests were so intimidated 
by the perfection of the design 
no one dared disturb the symmetry 
by removing so much as the nub of a carrot. 

And the other thing about all that 
was that it took only a few minutes 
for the outline of the turkey to disappear 
once the guests were encouraged to dig in, 
so that no one would have guessed 
that this platter of scattered vegetables ever bore 
the slightest resemblance to a turkey 
or any other two- or four-legged animal. 

It reminded me of the sand mandalas 
so carefully designed by Tibetan monks 
and then just as carefully destroyed 
by lines scored across the diameter of the circle, 
the variously colored sand then swept 
into a pile and carried in a vessel 
to the nearest moving water and poured in-- 
a reminder of the impermanence of art and life. 

Only, in the case of the vegetable turkey 
such a reminder was never intended. 
Or if it was, I was too busy slicing up 
even more vivid lessons in impermanence 
to notice.  I mean the real turkey minus its head 
and colorful feathers, and the ham 
minus the pig minus its corkscrew tail 
and minus the snout once happily slathered in mud.

(From The Rain in Portugal, 77-78).