O Turkey, My Turkey!
Daniel W. Segura-Whitman
11/20/08
While most literati know that Walt Whitman’s famous poem “O Captain, my Captain!” was written to mourn the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, few know that he borrowed the format of the poem from another. Years prior to the death of Lincoln, Whitman wrote a very similar ode to the turkey at the centerpiece of his Thanksgiving dinner.
O Turkey, my Turkey! Your shortish life is done,
You eat every scrap and much corn, so the fat entrée we sought is won
Port Wine is near, dinner bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While hungry eyes prayerfully kneel, is Turkey stuffed in preparing;
But O Heart! Gizzard! Liver!
O the juicy drops of drippings,
Whence from my gravy springs
There on the platter my Turkey lies,
Roasted for childrens’ droolings.
O Turkey! My Turkey! Plump up and hear dinn’r bells;
Brown up- for you the oven is warmed, for you a tummy growls,
While leaves fall, the harvest is plucked and the table’s a-crowding,
For you they call, that hungry mass, their eager faces yearning;
Here O Turkey! Dear dinner!
That axe that cleaved your head
It's some dream that on the stump,
You’ve fed our family… pre-packaged, processed ahead.
My Turkey needs not answer, breast, legs and thighs are brown;
My mother saves me a wing, but white-meat is renown;
The family is seated safe and sound, our dinner close to done;
From fragrant kitchen arrives a matron bearing potatoes, squash and bun;
Exult O Thankful diners, and ring O dinn’r bells!
And I, with sharpened knife,
Slice the breast… as my Turkey lies,
Browned… bereft of life.
