C a r o l y n D a u g h t e r s

When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they’re cut down
And brought into our houses

When clustered sparks
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night
In ordinary windows

We hear and sing
The customary carols

They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles
And flowering weeds of poetry
That are loved all the more
Because they are so common

But there are carols
That carry phrases
Of the haunting music
Of the other world
A music wild and dangerous
As a prophet’s message

Or the fresh truth of children
Who though they come to us
From our own bodies
Are altogether new
With their small limbs
And birdlike voices

They look at us
With their clear eyes
And ask the piercing questions
God alone can answer.

~ Anne Porter

On Friday, I posted Anne Porter’s poem “A Short Testament” to my blog.

I posted it cause my whole life I’ve felt beleaguered by the things I said when I shouldn’t have, the things I should have said but didn’t, the things I did and did not do. My whole life I’ve wanted to be good and do well. Along the way I’ve also noticed the things others have said and done (and not said and not done), but the mental tally I’ve kept is mine and mine alone.

In response to Friday’s posting, my friend LuAnne writes, “Reflecting back on the year … Continue Reading

A Short Testament

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I … Continue Reading