This is a poem written soon after my recovery from an illness this past summer. I was never as sick as the poem describes, but call it hyperbole. In spirit of the English-American poets of the 1700s, I tried to take on the relatively less familiar long meter and incorporated a more challenging inter-stanza rhyme scheme. Yes, I'm a literature freak, I know.
So frail and pale I laid in bed,
With pillow ‘neath my aching head;
My arms, so helpless, lay beside
The ailing body in my stead.
I could not sleep, I could not eat,
I could not simple words repeat,
I had no choice but to reside
Upon my bed, while seconds beat.
I was in pain and misery,
With not one soul to be with me,
With not one person by my side
As I laid on so painfully.
There was not either work or play
That I could do, that I could say,
I could not do a thing besides
To silent down and softly pray.
And so I prayed, and prayed some more,
Since I had need to ease my bore,
But as I learned to thus confide,
I saw what prayer had in store.
My illness was no curse nor test,
It came to me just to attest
That God is ever by my side,
Re-molding me as He deems best.
