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Fumbling Toward Grace

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Lest it go unspoken

Lest it go unspoken

Last updated on: January 19, 2011 at 11:53 pm by Sarah Babbs

Lest it go unspoken 2011-01-19T23:53:43-04:00 Sarah Babbs

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Welcome Morning

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry “hello there, Anne”

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,

dies young.

— Anne Sexton

I really love poetry. I can’t even remember exactly when I started to love it. I remember being in middle school and scouring the library for poems. I would copy down the ones I loved into small notebooks that I carried with me everywhere. I would read them until I started to know them by heart. I collected poetry the same way that some people collect baseball cards or rare coins.

I felt something reading a good poem that I had not really felt before. I can’t quite explain what that feeling was, but to find a poem and savor it made me come alive in a special way. To feel the words on my tongue, and to enter into an experience, a moment from the thoughts of another, was exhilarating. I feel this way whenever I read a good poem. I want to immediately share it with someone else, hoping to see the same sparkle of something-ness in them that it evoked in me. Good poetry makes you feel, or rather, it lets you feel.

I’ve even written some poetry in my day. I don’t often share it, and I haven’t written anything in a few years. I keep thinking I might like to be a writer, that maybe even God might like me to be a writer. I think the reason I’ve not continued with poetry is that I haven’t found my voice. I know there are things God wants me to say, and stories only I can tell, but I do not know at all how to say them. Maybe 2011 will be the year I try my hand at poetry again.

In the last year or so I have gotten away from poetry. Then I read something that takes my breath away, and I remember this love of mine. It’s a love I hope to share with my daughter, and one I hope to share more with you all!

Poetry

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