My grandmother was a wonderful poet that slipped her work between the pages of the books on her shelves. It made it impossible to get rid of a single volume after her passing, because what triumphs might we have lost. This was on the September 11th page of her Cheerio’s Book of Days. I was feeling blue, flipping through the pages today like it was a magic book of spells. Every poem reminds me of someone that needs to hear it. Then I got to the page where the person needing to hear it was me.
Pearls
Beside a rippling stream of thought
I found a treasure new;
Twas sweet to me, and I resolved
To pass it on to you.
I thought how much our lives are made
Or marred by little things,
And how the gleaming pearl is formed
By that which frets and stings.
Sometimes a little grain of sand
Inside the shell annoys
And gives the oyster pain, and so
A substance it employs
To cover o’er the fret and sting
It cannot put away
Till cause and cure together form
A pearl of lustrous ray
How oft in daily life we feel
Little cares perplex,
And like the sand within the shell
Annoy and sting and vex.
Let you and me with patience sweet
Each trial and care o’erspread
Till where we found a stinging grief
We leave a pearl instead.
Yes, I know this isn’t an oyster. Thanks for the poem, Nanna.
Great! Embrace the contingent and indeterminate. Ken