NOTE: I wrote the original version of this poem about twenty years ago. This version has been posted here almost every year for the last eight years or so. Happy Thanksgiving! —-jeff

Oh Stately Bird

By Jeff Baker

Oh stately bird

Who is there that does not love you

Our family gathered together, you the centerpiece of the table altar

Old Ben Franklin, I am told

Wanted you as the symbol of our fledgling nation

Not the Eagle.

If things had gone the other way, I cannot imagine us sitting down

To a meal of tough, sinewy Eagle.

Wild, bred, captured, fighting, wandering, independent, forever free.

In many ways, our national symbol you may well be.

–end–