Thanksgiving Poems (Expressing Your Most Thankful Self)

These thanksgiving poems give you time to gather around the table and share what you’re most thankful for this year. This article promises to be interesting.

Thanksgiving Poems

Thanksgiving is a time to gather around the table and share what you’re most thankful for this year. It’s also a time to put on your comfy pants and eat as much turkey as your heart desires.

Thankfully, you won’t be judged for dishing up seconds or eating another slice of pecan pie, because you’re surrounded by people who love you the most.

To get into the Thanksgiving spirit, we’ve come up with a list of thanksgiving poems that graciously express the joy of the holiday.

1. Thanksgiving Day by Lydia Maria Child

Over the river, and through the wood
Trot fast, my dapple-gray!
Spring over the ground,
Like a hunting-hound!
For this is Thanksgiving Day.
Over the river, and through the wood,
And straight through the barn-yard gate.
We seem to go
Extremely slow,—
It is so hard to wait!
Over the river and through the wood—
Now grandmother’s cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun!
Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin-pie

2. A Thanksgiving Poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Thou hast, with ever watchful eye,
Looked down on us with holy care,
And from thy storehouse in the sky
Hast scattered plenty everywhere.

Then lift we up our songs of praise
To thee, O Father, good and kind;
To thee we consecrate our days;
Be thine the temple of each mind.

With incense sweet our thanks ascend;
Before thy works our powers pall;
Though we should strive years without end,
We could not thank thee for them all.

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3. King for A Day by Jo McNally

I’m resting here quite regally,
The feature of the table.
Surrounded by potatoes that
I’d taste if I were able.

My subjects, scrubbed and beaming,
Circle round the royal platter.
They seem to be adoring me,
But something is the matter.

See me basking in the candlelight,
My skin so nicely tanned.
The reason for this treatment,
I do not understand.

While I’d love to peck that dish of corn
And gobble down a berry,
I find this jolly atmosphere
To be a trifle scary.

These human creatures were my friends.
They filled me up with bread,
But now I have suspicions that
They’re cannibals instead!

4. Turkey’s Thanksgiving Wish by Eva Adolfo

If a turkey will make a wish
It would be a long, long list.
It will give you all sorts of reasons
To change that turkey tradition.

It will wish you change your mind
Of having a turkey when you dine.
It will wish you’ll crave for seafood
Or tell you crabs would be good!

It will wish you have a toothache
So mashed potato is what you’ll pick.
Or wish that on Thanksgiving Dinner
Only vegetarians will come together.

Yet, people come and they insist
“A turkey dish is just the best!”
Poor turkey, it will just yell,
“Oh dear, please take away the
November in a year!

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5. Untitled by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

Thankful for all things let us be,
Though there be woes and misery;
Lessons they bring us for our good
Later ’twill all be understood.

Thankful for peace o’er land and sea,
Thankful for signs of liberty,
Thankful for homes, for life and health,
Pleasure and plenty, fame and wealth.

Thankful for friends and loved ones too,
Thankful for all things, good and true,
Thankful for harvest in the fall,
Thankful to Him who gave it all.

6. When Giving Is All We Have by Alberto Ríos

One river gives

Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.

We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

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7. Thanksgiving Day [“Over the river and through the wood”] by Lydia Marie Child

Over the river and through the wood,
To grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way

To carry the sleigh
Through the white and drifted snow
Over the river and through the wood–

Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes
And bites the nose,
As over the ground we go.

Over the river and through the wood,
To have first-rate play.
Hear the bells ring,
“Ting-a-ling-ding!”
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!

Over the river and through the wood,
And straight through the barn-yard gate.
We seem to go
Extremely slow–
It is so hard to wait!

Over the river and through the wood–
Now grandmother’s cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun!
Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin-pie!

8. The Harvest Moon by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes

And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!

All things are symbols: the external shows
Of Nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;

The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,
Only the empty nests are left behind,
And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

9. The Traveling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye

When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way the knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.
And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.

We hope this article on thanksgiving poems has been interesting. Kindly share this article with family, friends, and colleagues. Cheers.

Daily Time Poems.