Verses from my 50th Birthday

My daughter asked everyone to create poems/verses/haiku/smatterings from various forms: Sometimes it was my childhood name: Mary Gardiner and sometimes it was "Just Mary" and these are just a few of the responses. All the works were touching and memorable but I'm only posting a few of them so my head doesn't get too too big.

From Sara (based on Mary Gardiner)
M ischievious tendencies
A gle wit
R eady to take hold of her future
Y our mother's daughter (baby girl)

G rinning with happiness
A ble to make words beautiful
R ather flirty
D reamer
I dealist
N otably charismatic
E xtravert
R eady to support your dreams

From Pam

if the wind could speak its heart
of beauty untold
it would whisper Mary...
. . . just mary.


From D (based on Just Mary)

J ewel in our memories
U biquitous as ever, she undulates through our lives
S ultry, spicy as she is, smitten are we by her presence
T umble she might down slopes of snow, topples never on floors of dance.

M ince words she does not, but delivered gently -- well, on occasion
A ge of consent, well past, but we won't dwell on that
R adiant when she smiles, she resonates in our hearts
Y oung at heart, nubile of limb, I can't wait when Just Mary is Just Sixty!

From Susan Moger (who wrote something resonating Wallace Steven's Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird - Susan and I are writers of the same flock.)

5 Ways of Looking at Mary

In a class of students
The only mind singing
Was the mind of my friend Mary

In a red car
with a vanity plate
The blonde with all the words
is Mary

On an island
On a windjammer
In a bar . . . shh, the world is moving
Mary's writing

I look at pictures of Mary
and I miss the years
I didn't look at her in real life

It was spring all afternoon
Mary was singing
And she was going to sing
Mary held in our hearts
Always.

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On my fiftieth birthday, I cannot imagine anyone who was richer than I, with these wonderful friends and their thoughts and love around me.