Fortune Cookies on My Son’s Birthday
Your dearest wish will come true,
I hope
and you will find what you have lost
once you stop looking for it.
You always do
Do not rush through life.
Pause and enjoy it.
Because it is too fast
You’ll accomplish more
if you stay focused on gratitude.
Don’t be thankless
Someone is speaking well of
you at this very moment.
Speak well of others too
Be prepared to receive something special
It’s the only way to live
Your dearest wish will come true.
(Note: Found poem based on all of our family’s fortunes from takeout Chinese fortune cookies, which was my son’s requested birthday meal today.)
10 thoughts on "Fortune Cookies on My Son’s Birthday"
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What a lovely idea! I really like the simplicity and the love that saturate this poem.
Thank you! Our fortunes all oddly complimented each other, so it I felt like they were asking me to make a poem.
and in this season of graduations and children moving on and our wishing them good fortune, especially powerful mom poem! love it!
Thank you. Both of my kids were born in this season of frenzied change, so it always seems extra intense.
I love this, Amy! The visual possibilities and the unabashed love therein. Hope he had a great birthday!
Thank you! He did. We really enjoyed the day.
Love that you “saw” a poem in the fortunes. Got me thinking about other places we might see poetry that we usually just dismiss. You also got me thinking about what the poem would have been if you ordered the fortunes differently.
It was definitely a fun exercise. I thought about trying to reorder them and see what happened, but I ran out of time. It’d be fun to do this in a group and give everyone the same fortunes, and then then all the different poems.
What a wonderful idea. If you hadn’t mentioned how you used the fortune cookies of everyone at that birthday meal, it would still have been a powerful poem, full of mama’s wishes for her son. xo
Thank you! I appreciate it. They’re definitely thoughts I have often as both kids grow up.