You know I love a sonnet, and this one has some great parts–“we’re all peninsulas, I guess, joined to the mainland, part of the shore”–plus it feels appropriate for the week before Thanksgiving.
Sonnet from the Ephesians
by Barbara Crooker
Ephesians 1:16
I do not cease to give thanks, especially in November
even as we lose an hour of light, drawing
the curtains at 4:30 to keep out the cold. To remember
you are dust seems appropriate now. Crows are cawing
black elegies in the bare trees. Just past the Day of the Dead,
and I’m thankful for every friend who has blessed
my life, gold coins in a wooden chest. Who said
no man is an island? We’re all peninsulas, I guess,
joined to the mainland, part of the shore. We’re the sticks
in the bundle that can’t be broken. Even if
it doesn’t seem that way, the bickering of politics,
the blather on the nightly news. Maybe we speak in hieroglyphs,
unclear, always missing the mark? So let me be plain.
I’m grateful for the days of sun. I’m grateful for the rain.
I agree that being thankful for good friends is a great way to head into the darker colder days of November! I enjoyed this sonnet and it made me want to look at the verse that inspired it. Paul’s sentence structures are often so long there wasn’t a good place to break it, so a larger chunk is here:
~~
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit[f] of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.