Serenity

A Golden Shovel Poem

Photo of my grandnugget taken by her mother

I was scrolling through Twitter when I came across some of my poet friends volleying around a poetic form I’d never seen before, The Golden Shovel, where you take a line from another poem or lyrics and use each word as the last word of each line in a new poem, so I had to give it a try. Mere days before, my daughter sent me this picture of the nugget, and the one word that came to my mind was serenity. Both she and the ocean bring me the level of peace on her cherubin face. My grandmother’s favorite poem/prayer was the serenity prayer, and here is the line I always struggled with most:

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”

Precious moments in your presence grant
permission of reconciliation within me
promises that a new beginning brings the
possibility of serenity

Through your eyes the ability to
trust in a way I could never accept
triumphantly pushing beyond the
turbulence of tumultuous things

Of nightmares where I
operated in response to what I cannot
obtain until you brought peaceful change