Today is your birthday,
the twenty-first of November,
two thousand and five,
in the year of our Lord,
the feast of the Presentation of Mary,
a day after Christ the King.
This is not a birthday poem
to be recited in a party
when strangers can masquerade as friends
and real friends are nowhere to be found
because distances are keeping them busy
with their crowded lives.
Rather it is a hymn of praise
to our living God,
also a thank-you gesture to our parents.
