For all you have Given
by Samuel Sun, Wesley College Melbourne
Winner, Years 7 – 8, performance poetry
This body is a vessel, a ship of fragile bone,
carrying me across ninety years of oceans unknown.
I wake each day within its quiet grace,
and marvel that it still holds me in place.
Thank you,
Body,
For holding me when the world tried to crush me.
For bones that do not shatter though they groan under weight.
For lungs that drink fire and still return me air.
For the spine that carries me,
upright,
through storms that would rather see me bent.
My body heaves me through all,
Through better or through worse.
Through thick or though thin.
I ache, and I yearn, but somehow,
It never fails, or gives in.
Thank you, body, for your ability to survive.
Every heartbeat,
A gift I did not earn,
A drum that insists:
Live, live, live.
For hands that shape nothing into something,
that turn hunger into bread,
silence into song,
clay into prayer.
Thank you body, for your ability to create.
Every event that occurs through my life,
My birthday, my wedding, every day I survive.
These things will fade if it wasn’t for you,
An ability to remember, an ability to thrive.
To remember the things that would’ve been long gone,
The things that were important, an inevitable bond, 33
Yet if we couldn’t recall, look back at these things,
It would be gone,
Forever, forever, forever.
Thank you body, for your ability to remember.
Crying, Laughing,
Hiding, Raging,
Overflowing with joy.
This body is more than flesh,
it is a vessel of every storm.
Eyes hold oceans of joy and grief,
seeing beauty, watching loss.
Ears cradle laughter like a blessing,
yet tremble at silence after anger.
The nose awakens forgotten love,
rain, bread, perfume, memories alive.
The tongue tastes sweetness and sorrow,
and shapes words that heal or wound.
Skin remembers,
the hug, the scar, the ache of absence.
How miraculous to feel so much:
fear, love, longing, wonder.
Thank you body, for the ability to feel,
Thank you.
For everything.
For all of it.
Want to read more poems? Explore the other Years 7 – 8 finalists.