A Canada Day Thank-you Hymn

 

For freedom to get on our knees ten times a day if we so please

For blankets spread with unrushed ease beneath a canopy of trees

For picnic baskets unpacked by three-year-old happiness run wild

For fearless laughter sparkling skyward between mother and her child

For living without giving second thought to constant hunger pangs

A world outside each window, beckoning, without barbed wire fangs

For leisure hours among flowers that no gardener can tame

For the innocence of wonder no matter our age or name

For the beauty of life’s Duties in the trench of home, sweet home

For words like ‘we’ and ‘together’ to weather whatever may come

For family vacations whether one week or an afternoon

For special celebrations or the ordinary, gone too soon

For liquid diamonds splayed against backdrops of blue, after the splash

For bills to pay and chores to do and God, where hope and heartache clash

For more than we deserve, without reserve, goodness out-poured

For freedom to linger over a cup of tea, we thank Thee, Lord

For neighbours who are friends and ‘love thy neighbours’ flawless law

For New-day’s faithful second chance that mercy grants to humbled awe

For we-who-once-were-younger feeling comfortable in older skin

For breezes that lilt across leaves like bow over a violin

For masterpiece montages played on earth’s eastward and westward edge

Oh Lord, my God, when we see these we vow to keep faith’s earnest pledge

If these are but the outer fringes of what none have seen or heard

For welkin-inkwells, grass-blade quills, where poetry spills undeterred

For Favor bending over backwards to save us from ourselves

For rain-bejeweled woodlands hosting mushroom-sized fairies and elves  

For we who are our own worst enemy and yet our most devoted friend

For bygones we would change except for what they taught us in the end

For the fine art of love in spite of highest highs and lowest lows

For the divine partaking of heart-breaking thorn and healing rose

For quaking grit and shaking ‘sit’ as teenagers learn how to drive

For this and so much more, dear Lord we are thankful to be alive

For time that takes its tender toll but always only day by day

For morning-tides that roll the crumpled charge of yesterday away

For plain cocoons that hold and unfold butterflies and petal-wings

For this and so much more dear Lord, the dazzled poet sings and sings

© Janet Martin