Hello, dVerse poets! This is Merril welcoming you from southern New Jersey. Here in the US, we just celebrated Thanksgiving, and if you celebrated it, too, I hope it was wonderful! Today is Giving Tuesday (often written with the hashtag #GivingTuesday). The name and movement began in the US, the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, but it has become a global movement. It is intended to mobilize giving to charitable organizations and nonprofits. It’s seen as a counterpart to the flurry of shopping and commercialization at this time of year.

So, maybe you are a giver, or maybe you don’t give a bleep about giving. Maybe you give blood, perhaps you have given birth, or maybe you’ve given till it hurts. Yes, today, we’re going to write about giving–or if you prefer, not giving.

To get you started, here’s a poem by Alberto Rios, “When Giving Is All We Have”

“One river gives
Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.”

The complete poem here.

Robert Graves on the power of giving love:

“Giving you everything,
I too, who once had nothing,
Am left with more than everything”

For something completely different, there’s Dorothy Parker’s take:

Coda
by Dorothy Parker

There’s little in taking or giving,
There’s little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest’s for a clam in a shell,
So I’m thinking of throwing the battle-
Would you kindly direct me to hell?

So today, during this busy holiday season, I want to make this prompt easy. Write a poem about giving– or not giving. Be sincere or cynical. Be introspective or expansive. Be serious or frivolous. Just give us a poem.
Please use some form of the word give in your poem or title.

To Join Us:
*Write a poem on your blog.
*Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr Linky below and remember to check the little box to accept the use/privacy policy.
*There you will find links to other poets, and more will join during the next 48 hours so check back to read other entries.
*Read and comment on other poet’s work, we all go here to have our poems read.
*Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog.