Since it's Thanksgiving on Thursday, I've edited an older poem to share. I know that in the world there are too many who are not free from want.
Thanksgiving
Invictus
-
after Wilde & Henley
Struggling
for grace in morning’s prison
he wipes sleep from eyes, stretches
yet-darkness
before lighting a candle.
Enthralled
by beauty, the warbling flame,
dancing
shadows cast, he hums an old, familiar tune,
remembers
a friend he loved, heard joy,
sonorous
bass in lifeblood,
drumming
heart. This same ritual,
performed
for centuries. The pilgrim, home.
Day
stirring, frees herself, maiden
white
with mist, gowned for occasion,
her
grey veil gradually lifts, and there is bonniness
in
simple tasks while robins chirp reminders:
make
coffee, make toast, mix the Christmas cake,
how
good it is to breathe, taste, see.
There
is no gallow anon, no plank to walk.
This
is no Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Stronger
than any epoch is the resolve
that
spring will return, jungle of cornucopia.
Snowdrops,
previewed through dew,
in
New Year’s baptism, rise renewed.
Orla
Fay
Ed.
22/11/22
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