Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Birthday(s)

Traditional English birthday greeting

Is that a birthday? 'tis, alas! too clear;

'Tis but the funeral of the former year.
~Alexander Pope, To Mrs. M. B, line 9.

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” 
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth. ” 
― Ovid, Metamorphoses

A one-year-old girl playing with her birthday balloons in Khulna, Bangladesh

Midweek Motif ~ Birthday(s)

It is either your birthday 

or your un-birthday.  

And someone else's as well.

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem giving yourself or someone else a birthday gift on a specific birthday.  

(Or remember one already given/received.)

A BIRTHDAY
by: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these,

Because my love is come to me.

 

Raise me a daïs of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

The Author Reflects on His 35th Birthday

Related Poem Content Details

BY ISHMAEL REED

35? I have been looking forward 

To you for many years now 

So much so that 

I feel you and I are old 

Friends and so on this day, 35 

I propose a toast to 

Me and You 

35? From this day on 

I swear before the bountiful 

Osiris that 

If I ever 

If I EVER 

Try to bring out the 

Best in folks again I 

Want somebody to take me 

Outside and kick me up and 

Down the sidewalk or 

Sit me in a corner with a 

Funnel on my head 

. . . .

Read the rest HERE

I Wish I Want I Need

Related Poem Content Details

BY GAIL MAZUR

The black kitten cries at her bowl 

meek meek and the gray one glowers 

from the windowsill. My hand on the can 

to serve them. First day of spring. 

Yesterday I drove my little mother for hours 

through wet snow. Her eightieth birthday. 

What she wanted was that ride with me— 

shopping, gossiping, mulling old grievances, 

1930, 1958, 1970. 

How cruel the world has been to her, 

how uncanny she’s survived it. 

In her bag, a birthday card 

from “my Nemesis,” signed Sincerely 

with love—“Why is she doing this to me?” 

she demands, “She hates me.” 

“Maybe 

she loves you” is and isn’t what Mother 

wants to hear, maybe after sixty years 

the connection might as well be love. 

Might well be love, I don’t say— 

I won’t spoil her birthday, 

my implacable mother.

. . . . 

Read the Rest HERE.

For K.R. On Her Sixtieth Birthday 

by Richard Wilbur

Blow out the candles of your cake.

They will not leave you in the dark,
Who round with grace this dusky arc
Of the grand tour which souls must take.

You who have sounded William Blake,
And the still pool, to Plato's mark,
Blow out the candles of your cake.
They will not leave you in the dark.

Yet, for your friends' benighted sake,
Detain your upward-flying spark;
Get us that wish, though like the lark
You whet your wings till dawn shall break:
Blow out the candles of your cake. 

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Please share your new poem with Mr. Linky below and visit others 

in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be ~ Compromise )