Poem of the Week

Recessionary Gifts

(Douglas Adams to My Father)

The way companies show graciousness,

Especially around the holidays,

Maybe a bonus,

But mostly,

The clock at twenty-five years,

The watch at thirty,

The plaque at thirty-five

Seems appropriate especially

When fathers have sacrificed

Families, health, and relationships

On the altar of labor.

How much more appropriate then,

That my father,

After working forty years

With the same company,

A week before Christmas,

And two years till retirement,

is handed the pink slip.

And the boss, like the ghost

Of Douglas Adam’s past, says,

So long and thanks for all the fish.

The Brevity of Sanctity

(Snow Blessings)

Someday I will face my sins

That done and undone

But for now the snow has crept in under the cover of night

The next morning the earth lies blanketed white.

My conscience now unpricked by

The lawn’s last cutting undone

The dead flowers I should have trimmed

The fencerow I should have painted

The sidewalk I should have swept

All’s now cloaked in a heavenly glow.