An Ode to Survivors

This would be a different post if I hadn’t been working too many hours this week.

There would be a photo illustration, for one. I would have got outside before the warming day melted the snow skiffs that covered our tulips. Snow skiffs on two days. I counted.

There would be a polished haiku, for another. Well, there would be a revised haiku.

It is what it is.

White blankets green stalks;
shiv’ring blooms whisper, “Stay strong,
for this too shall pass.”

If they can stick it, I can. The work and the weather.

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7 Responses to An Ode to Survivors

  1. I was wondering what to say about your Mother’s Day unwanted, insensitive ads, when you came up with one of my mother’s favourite sayings, “This, too, shall pass.” So deeply ingrained in my consciousness is her life of figuring out how to “stick it.” The mental illnesses of family members, a heart condition that almost killed her when in middle age she earned her hard-won B.A., a laundry list of to-dos and another of unfulfilled wishes. We have no tulips yet, but the shiv’ring daffodils in a winter scene of snow-bent spruce branches and blanketed grass sent me a similar message of endurance. We have been greatly blessed by our mothers. If they could stick it, we can.

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Laurna – Yes, they did and yes, we can too. I don’t compare my own situation to the challenges they faced a generation ago, at least not consciously, but I do find myself whining from time to time.

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Laurna – G.K. Chesterton writes about whether Jesus hid his laughter from his disciples when he didn’t hide his caring or his anger. It’s an interesting thought: That laughter is maybe the hardest to explain, and can be the most unsettling, but shared laughter is a delight.

  2. Jim Taylor says:

    Spring’s tongue wets its lips
    Ventures forth deliciously
    Buds swell like nipples

    Okay, it borders on eroticism. But isn’t spring erotic, after all?

    Jim T

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Jim T – Borders? 🙂 Yes, Spring can be seen as erotic. And hopeful. And vigorous.

  3. Tom Watson says:

    Here’s to the survivors.

    HOPE REBORN
    The bleak winter wanes,
    then is gone; the spring bursts forth
    in all its beauty.

    Tom

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