How to Write a Thank You Note: Thanksgiving 2023 / 2025

"Gloucester Old Spot," John Miles (active 1811-1842. Photo credit: Gloucester Museum Service Art Collection 

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Not my best poem, perhaps, but one of my favorites, as it invokes love of language, plants and animals (especially the pig, of course), and my wife. And it teaches a thing or two about thank-you notes, too. It's included in my book Mouth Work, available directly from me (send an email to [email protected]) or from Amazon. 
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How to Write a Thank You Note
Every gift, however trifling, should be acknowledged.
—Lillian Eichler Watson, Standard Book of Letter Writing (1948, 1958)

Beginning my song of thanks as big as the world: alleluia!
For these I am thankful: for cara-rayada and mirikina,
for schmalschnauzige and potto and cuchumbi, and for all
milky plants, dandelion, milkweed, and sow-thistle: shushuk! bhulan!
For names that make me laugh—chickwittles and pig-sty daisy--
I praise God in brief and simple words: safi! umununi!
For plants that grow on roadsides and beautify dumpsters
and for those called common—mallow, chickweed, mullein
(for I too am common)—I give thanks, as I do for the victuals
the wild swine eat—oak mast, prickly pear fruit, and leopard frog.
Selah.

I am grateful for the devourers, boar and barrow, gilt and sow.
For piglet and shoat I sing this hymn of thanksgiving and instruction:
O feral hog of Arkansas, O mulefoot from the Mississippi,
write the letter quickly, while the glow is still with you!
O snuffle-snout and nose-plow, the words will come of their own accord!
You bacon- and chitterling-maker, it’s more gracious to mention the gifts,
the sowbread, grub and fawn, for which you give thanks.
For khuk and budur, for the moon in her cirrus boa
whose silvery snout roots up the truffles of the stars,
who sweet-cures the dreams she sends to my beloved,
I will always give thanks. Scham-scham! Zizel and susel! Hallelujah!
 
from Mouth Work
St. Andrews University Press (2016)

For an account of how the poem drew its inspiration from Jacques Roubaud, the French poet in the Oulipo movement, see my blogpost from 2021. ​

Common mullein

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Sowthistle

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Mulefoot sows

Updated 26 November 2024