35. Ash-Shakur – Gratitude – Giving Back

Suggests thankful, grateful, appreciation.
'Memory is the diary that we all carry about
with us,' Oscar Wilde  

Remember?

I don’t remember … my birth, unconscious skills,
all that money spent, my wrench from source,
or clothes that I have worn, those times when ill,
and all the lovers loved within my course.

Moments of pleasure,
moments of rest,
moments of leisure,
doing my worst - and my best.

But love is the energy I mostly
forget to remember at my cost,
like when I was at one, when I was me;
humility when plots were getting lost.

Andrew’s smiling face and digging elbow,
his nod, a grin, a chuckle … to say thank you.

Transformation

Dear Andrew, Thank you
- all of you – the other evening,
for a pub of drinking men,
drunks and fat boys, teenagers:

all a father needs when out for a pint
with his wife and special son,
walking up cobbles and drinking down
lemonade, fosters, ice and a slice,

but it was dancing at the juke box
- retro rock – loud as a propeller
that got the locals up on the dance floor
- oh yes, and the Down’s boy

smiling like a sunrise
turning. With love. Sincerely yours,

Ta
For seven years I wrote a diary,
nightly, asking ‘What’s my learning!?
‘My little contribution?
“A highlight from today’

in blue workbooks; a kind of romance
from days with tiny pieces, drawn
from wells, lively offerings,
brighter moments dawn to dawn.

It would be easy to get cynical;
say it’s weird that a younger ‘me’ believed
it important to catch those little fish
from pools of curled anemones
urchins, delicate algae, crabs:
but No I say Hello and Thanks.