thankful

My Poem “Giving Thanks”

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Life is sometimes testing…
Life is sometimes depressing…
Life is sometimes a hard pill to swallow…
Life is precious, as is time –
and that is why we all need
to embrace every moment
with everybody we love,
because unfortunately
Life is not filled with
an ending number of tomorrows.

Life is never perfect –
no one ever always gets what they want…
Life is not meant to be anyone’s
personal version of perfection,
because if that were not the case
then we would be able to stop
people from leaving us
and we would always be able
to find what we have lost.

Life is a chain of changes…
Life is a series of streams…
Life is a wave of emotions
that rise high one day
and then crash down around you
when you least expect them.

Life is what it is…
Life is what it is designed to be…
Life is what it needs to be –
but that doesn’t mean that we
always have to like it;
however, sometimes it is the things
in this Life that we have absolutely
no control over –
which is most things, most of the time –
that are what make us who we are,
what we are, and why we are
the way that we are,
and it is the people who have seen us
at our worst but nevertheless still love us –
our loved ones who we share memories with –
who we should daily look at
and give thanks for
for simply being there when
we needed them the most
and sometimes people who we
only get to reconnect with
around Christmas time
or within the season of Thanksgiving.

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My Poem ‘Thankful for’

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As family prepare to gather,
as the sun shines
and the sky is blue –
as someone who is thankful,
as someone who is grateful,
who is both the loved and the lover,
I am thankful in more ways
than I could ever say
to be alive and to be able
to write this for you.

I take lots of time
thinking about the who,
the what, and the when
that have passed by like a river;
I constantly reflect
what I see and what I feel;
I have always considered
golden experiences
as memories to be made
a part of my DNA,
as well as simultaneously
to be remembered;
I have always believed
that no matter where you are in your life,
wherever you are in the world,
that there is always something
that to anybody else would seem small –
but to you that same something is a big deal.

As I have gotten older,
the things that I am thankful for have changed –
but that which matters the most to me
is still the same;
as I have lived, I have slowly come to realize
that life goes by faster than a bullet-train,
and things do sometimes happen
that you should not spend too much time
trying to explain.

Clouds form, rain falls;
colour is painted over the face of the dark;
there is no such thing as an impenetrable wall;
the seafloor, the sands of an island shore,
the photos of now compared to those of before,
that which will be forevermore:
the indescribable, the tangible,
the special, the spiritual –
that which only I will ever truly know –
is what I am the most grateful for;
however, the gift of love
given with all their heart
by the love of my life only to me
is the thing that I am the most fulfilled by
and in my life I am the most thankful for.

My Poem ‘Time to Remember’

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We remember the heroes;
we remember the villains;
we remember the what,
the where, the when, and the why;
we remember the people who tried;
we remember the people who achieved;
we remember those who fought the good fight
but who died while doing what they loved
and what they believed in;
we remember the good times,
and we remember the bad;
we remember the times
that went by too quickly,
that we remember coming to an end
as we looked over our shoulder and cried.

As the weather turns colder,
as the leaves change colour
and then fall to the ground,
as people wrap up more
and wear more layers,
as we buy fireworks and light bonfires
and we gather together
and we start to think about the well-being
of our significant others,
a spirit of good-will and humanity
sweeps over the world.

We should all be thankful for what we have;
there will always be someone
who will look at you
and want what means the most to you;
we all make new footprints
while walking again down familiar paths;
sometimes, especially at this time of the year,
things of importance come to light
that before you always wondered about
but you never knew.

Gifts of sentiment,
things that still carry a shine of memory,
the unique and the different,
the people who matter to you dearly,
seem to glow brighter
at the coldest and the darkest time of the year-
and now is the perfect time
to tell someone or to remind someone
that as long as they are in your thoughts
and as long as they are a part of your life
that they need not fear.

Gather, surround,
think, thank, be grateful, wrap,
step closer, invite,
reconnect the ties
that were once believed severed forever;
forgive, but do not forget;
make the most of the present;
save all that you can,
because these are the times
of your life to remember.

Time-to-remember-poem-excerpt

My Poem ‘A World of Difference’

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today I gave money to a homeless person;
today I gave a smile to someone
who really looked like they needed it;
today I offered to help someone;
today I bought a gift for someone, and it felt good;
today I thought about a friend,
and I silently gave them my love;
today I wrote a poem;
today I hoped that one day no one
would ever have to want for anything,
and that we all would honestly be able to say
that we have enough;
today I marveled at the spirit of generosity
that I felt in the air;
today I watched the sunrise,
and I am about to watch the sunset;
today I had a conversation with a random stranger
in a music store about vinyl albums,
and about how music sounds better
when it is played on a record player;
today I am thankful for what I have,
and not for what I don’t have –
because it is important to remember
sometimes that we are one person,
of one life, on one planet,
and one act of thanks and gratitude
can make a world of difference.