Gifts Are For Giving

The Sunday Scribblings prompt is GIFT.
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This is an old poem of mine that seemed appropriate to the prompt. You may have seen it before, for which I apologize.

THE GIFT OF WORDS

You say I have the gift of words.

Someday my words may fail me,
lost in a maze of neurons, wells of words
with no bucket to retrieve them;
or they may tangle on my tongue
like Hannah's yarn after her stroke
when she worried helplessly
among her skeins and needles.

Gifts are for giving.

Thus I would bequeath to you
a shimmer of words when I no longer
can order them into their patterns.
They will glint like breeze-tossed aspen leaves
or glimmer like showers in sunshine
where each drop holds a rainbow.
They will be as numerous
as stars
as facets of waves
as moments of our love
and fragrant like water touching parched earth.

They will hold bird song and wind song
but, alas, no Mozart, no sonnets, no meaning -
just their fragments.

I will scatter them at random on a fragile web
spangled with words and syllables like sequins
and toss it scarf-like over you.

This is my gift.

Phyllis Sterling Smith