Love Poem: Gratitude
Sara Kendrick Avatar
Written by: Sara Kendrick

Gratitude

Birthdays come but once a year
A day we celebrate, a day to cheer
We all know the day we're born and our age
For birthdays bring us joy or change of stage

The day I celebrated my fourty-ninth year
On the other side of the world fear
Horror for a young girl named Heather
Who was swimming in ocean waters from boat tethered

Swimming around the ocean deep 
Working up an appetitate for something to eat
Was a great white shark fourteen feet, whopper
Jaws powerful enough to bite through copper

At home I thought I had turned fifty
I figured this year would be very nifty
My father who was in his nineties
Reminded me that I was only fourty-ninty

In a land way down yonder
A girl named Heather was pulled under
Great white figured she was good meat
Nice and tender a very tasty treat

A girl named Heather was saved
That very day lived to be one to praise
People who worked to keep her alive
She praised God who lives in hearts and on high

Sara lived many years
Saw her grandsons through tears
She was the strength and glue
Who saw her family's problems through

Just in recent years in a land down under
A fourteen foot great white shark did blunder
Caught in a fisherman's net
He'll probably live this mistake regret

No, the fisherman cuts the lines
Frees his catch and shark from bind
Now the shark he named Cindy
Follows him around even when windy

Follows him everywhere he goes
Let's him pet her on her nose
Rub her belly and dorsal fin
She even grunts and tries to grin

Which of these do you think is the most grateful
Heather who is now disable
The shark who was spared his life
Or Sara the mother, grandmother, and wife


(The story about Heather is true. The shark circled and bit her right leg.  Then circled and 
grabbed her left leg.  The people on the boat were hitting the shark and try to pull her into 
the boat and the shark took her whole left leg off.  She was only attended by a nurse who 
was on the boat and radioed a doctor on shore as to what to do.  She was 20 hours away 
from the nearest doctor.  She was lifeflighted to a hospital in California where she had to 
have multiple surgeries and now has an artificial leg.     The story about the shark caught in 
a fisherman's net was really not true.  The grandmother here was a true story.)