Poem - The Importance of being Suzie

By Stanley Collymore

Birthdays are the personal reference points pertaining

To when our individual life began; how the latter’s

Transition in the interim period has led to what

We now are, and will possibly also quite

Significantly influence our foreseeable

Future too. In other words reality,

Splendidly and encouragingly

Adorned in our cherished dreams, affording us both the

Opportunity and the intentional scope to positively

Do whatever it is that we choose to. And since

You typically exemplify this commendable

Mantra in every conceivable way, what

Better time then to aptly recognize,

Congratulate and support you

Suzie than appropriately on

Your occurring birthday.

© Stanley V. Collymore

22 February 2019.

Author’s Remarks:

There are some people who from the very first moment of meeting them, and putting both personal chemistry and societal affinity aside, you instinctively know and appreciatively applaud the fact that the meritorious decision on their parents’ part to both produce and afterwards facilitate the birth of that individual, and their biological offspring was a laudable one to say the very least. And Suzie, for whom I’ve specifically conceived and produced this poem, is most emphatically very much in that category of persons.

And to satisfy the idle curiosity of speculative minds – and exclusively so in Britain where altruism and its associated activities are virtually unheard of by the vast majority of the population there, and to the rest of them who’ve actually come across this terminology it’s primarily regarded by them as a highly unwarranted intrusion into their tedious personal, social and even their monotonous working lives and, therefore, can best be equated in their skewed thoughts and unthinkingly, twisted assumptions, any such accorded compliments that is, as the equivalent of a most coruscating and extremely offensive swear word that’s unexpectedly been lobbied at them, and accounts for why when in the UK I rarely – outside of family members, particularly very close and trusted, longstanding friends – ever write poetry for anyone else in Britain, since my general and decidedly discerning nature regarding people as a whole isn’t and never will be conducive to casting pearls before swine; a problem which I don’t encounter anywhere else outside of the United Kingdom – Suzie: who is very much English and for whom this poem is written, is a remarkably and quite self-evidently, when one observes her, happy married lady with a husband, obviously, and a family of their own, which is itself a distinctive uncommonness in contemporary Britain.

And it’s in her role as a highly skilled, efficient, thoroughly competent, impeccably dedicated and, most significantly in that now intensely endangered position as the “good-old-fashioned librarian”, who not only knows and consequently appreciates but also assiduously endeavours to maintain the erstwhile ethos and deep-rooted standards of what a library is there for and all about – characteristics now commonplace and markedly lacking in an increasingly dumbed-down British public – that I first met Suzie.

So against the scathing backdrop of all the aforementioned that I’ve earlier pointed out, here’s my earnest wish to Suzie that she, together with her husband and their family, have a first-rate and a most memorable birthday on the 15 March 2019. “Happy Birthday Suzie!”