Keep Breathing, Keep Smiling - For Mrs. McDonald

Room of blue and green and gold

Holds wonders great and bones of old.

Art of those who’ve moved and gone

Adorn the walls, as white as swans,

To remind the ones they left behind

That life goes on, through stress and grind.

A lonely shelf, of average brown,

Holds the world in soft white hands,

Page and ink in which to drown,

That take you to strange ancient lands.

Skies of red and bronze and black,

That shatter souls and hopes and dreams,

Force you never to look back, at

Mist that drifts in skies and streams.

Men strain against the dying days

And cry until their voices break,

But a wilful voice’s piercing rays

Crash through the salty, silver wake.

They taught me how to stand and fight

To break the surf and pound the drum,

To shun the dying of the light;

A stronger soldier did I become.

These books you gave were hard to tread

And even now they hurt to read

Their pages stain my fingers red,

Their truth grows tall; an unwanted seed

In the garden of a mind

Once touched by fear and blackened dread.

It now remains yet undefined,

Unalive but not quite dead.

These books you gave were so much more

Than pages, ink, and spine.

In them I could not ignore,

Could not diminish or decline,

An ache I felt deep in my bones

Where roses sweet as rain,

Grew around their names like vines:

Fitzgerald, King, and Twain.

These books you gave were pen and ink

On which to write a tale,

Perhaps not grand or long, I think,

But to nonetheless unveil

A truth that grows inside my mind

A seed unwanted, raw and plain,

It burns with passion; unrefined,

And too strong to contain.

A fire started in my chest

Of gold and silver flames.

With pages torn and fingers pressed

To tortoise shell brown frames,

I set out to write a tour-de-force,

To see around the riverbend,

A long and very winding course

But perhaps worth it in the end.

You showed me who I could yet be

Not where I’ve been before,

A part of me I could not see -

One who chases something more.