Liturgy for sandwich fair

Liturgy for Sandwich Fair

I thank you for the beauty of this day

and for all the Octobers just like this one.

Thank you for ferris wheel rides high above the midway

and for the way light hits those maples.

Thank you for fried dough, caramel apples

cotton candy, and all things sticky and delicious.

Thank you for 1st prize apple pies

and for this 1st prize pumpkin (which truly is impressive).

And now, I add my gratitude for garish things—

in particular, for this plastic blow up spiderman

my grandson has not stopped talking about since he won it

at the ring-the-bell-with-a-sledgehammer booth.

(Thank you, too, for the lanky fair guy who rigged the game so my grandson would win.

And whatever else the fair guy’s thoughts are as he lays down for a smoke in his RV tonight,

may his goodness toward a little kid be, at least, a small part of what he remembers of the day.)

Thank you for Jerseys, Holsteins, and Herefords—and for those farm kids

who sit on bales of hay and brush their lustrous creatures lovingly, lovingly.

And forgive me that when my 4-year old grandson saw a bale of hay,

he had to ask, “What is that?”

I did not mean to keep from him the sweet smell of barns,

and the slow grain chew of horses and goats and cows

with all the time in the world.

 Kate Young Wilder