A Christmas Gift and Seasons Greetings

 

A Christmas Gift

By Mary R. Davidsaver

 

I wake in the hours before dawn

Three days shy of Christmas.

This day holds plans for a car trip,

A mission to deliver a gift. 

A gentle soul made a request

That’s going to be answered

With a present from his past: toys.

Building blocks brought down from a shelf

Beginning a new life,

Or continuing an old one

That was waylaid for many years.

My being here is its own gift.

To have lived long enough to see

How this story completes a loop—

Beginning, middle, ending—

With the same toys.

 

 

Seasons Greetings

By Mary R. Davidsaver

 

Christmas cards lay on the table.

Fewer this year.

They arrived unbidden.

My half-hearted quest for cards

Found nothing satisfying.

I came away empty handed.

So many voids in my mailing list:

Dear friends, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles.

Last year a brother suddenly gone.

I expected no notice of my lapse.

Wrong again.  

However—

One name drew my attention

It didn’t register. Who’s this Helen?

Inside, a view from a high vantage point

Overlooking a scenic river

Dressed in seasonal greens and golds.

Only one answer to the question.

Only one couple climbed river bluffs

For pictures, poetry, and purpose:

To honor the Driftless magic

Of the river in our own backyard,

Too often overlooked and bypassed in haste.

I found my copy of BLUFFING by Dick Stahl,

Eminent emissary of the Mississippi River.

I read it again with fresh eyes

And discovered its spirit anew.