Whether in addition to or instead of saying Grace, you can’t go wrong with a good poem at the Thanksgiving table. It’s one of those few occasions when declaiming isn’t totally inappropriate, so go for it! Wendell Berry or Mary Oliver would not be out of place, and the Poetry Foundation has been kind enough put together a fine Thanksgiving poem collection for any table you might be declaiming at. May you all have good ones wherever you go, and pie if you want it, dear readers.

Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better

E’er smoked from an oven or circled a platter!
Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine,
Brighter eyes never watched o’er its baking, than thine!
And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow,
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!

— John Greenleaf Whittier

{The reversible painting above is “The Vegetable Gardner” by 16th-century vegetable-person painter Giuseppe Archimboldo.)