Family, Friends, and Gratitude.

My Search for the Right Poem Continues

I am searching for a poem celebrating friendship and/or family and/or gratitude to be read at my daughter’s wedding. Using friendship, family, and gratitude in my online search has yielded a frustrating nothing.

There’s no shortage of the outdated, the outrageous, the bewildering, the smarmy; I have spent literally hours scanning, groan-sighing, and massaging my aching temples.

Am I missing something? Both poets.org and The Poetry Foundation have failed me. I’ve even exhausted the Buzzfeed style “best of” listicles: Poems about friendship that your BFF will love! or Poems about family to share when things get tough.

What if I were to write a poem? The thought enters my head, not because I think I’m so great, but because it would be easier. I know I was tasked to find, not write a poem, but I could attribute it to somebody famous. I imagine myself at the ceremony, nodding in faux appreciation at my own words while some dead poet is rolling over in her grave.

We still have over a month, and we will find something. Still, the hunt has made me wonder why friendship, family, and gratitude prove to be such elusive subjects of fine poetry when they are literally the root of every meaningful thing humans manage to accomplish. Maybe when we joyfully gather with family and friends, awash in gratitude, there’s no need for imagery or metaphor, and it’s not the way of poetry, to simply state the blatantly obvious.