Jerry Chasen's Blog

A good friend was celebrating his 60th this year, and shared that he had a year’s worth of celebrations in store. It got me thinking about “what if” we always celebrated a birthday for the year, and “what if” other things.

I liked “Blessing” so much, I basically tried to recreate it. This “copy”, as might be expected, isn’t as effective, In think. But I thought it was cool that it could be read horizontally or vertically, with the rhyme with each set of 4 (horizontally) or within each set of 4 (vertically). My read is of it vertically.

“To have the good fortune to know your good fortune and so know good fortune indeed”–rarely does an opening come to me so strongly. This would not let go until I finished the piece. I rarely title these, but this one demanded to be called “Blessing”–for obvious reasons.

I often felt that the commercial greetings that I bought were so much less than I wanted to say, so I resolved to create a new birthday greeting of my own each year. It helps that a good friend’s birthday is on January 6!

This magical photograph is of our youngest nephew (who happens to also be our Godchild), playing on the shore at Sanibel island. I “heard” the first and last lines of this poem, and the rest wrote itself as fast as any piece I ever did.