A Gift Poem by Richard G Berg

Her gift is a gift
Of a different kind
A kind surprise:
Small ball of candle.

Cared by hand
Coloured by heart
Covered in a jaunt of cherry-blossom
Dragonflies and butterflies sprinkled
With a slanting contagion of pink
Inlaid, outlaid, overlaid
Reaching a flower's peak
From which its wick meekly blinks.

She called this candle: precious
It is too modest to claim this name
Lighting it would rush, gush
And all too soon, hush
Its flicker of familial fame.

Watching it, unlit, would be
To know her more
And warm the seal of mother-kind
To contemplate the dripping wax
Of time-touched talents
That from her mother through her
Leave one loving this, and all her gifts
With modesty most blind.



November 2021