December 23, 2009

(Christmas spoiler alert!)

The Christmas presents I'm making for my immediate family involve poetry, but since I'm pretty sure none of them read this blog (OR DO YOU, SNEAKIES?) I feel safe disclosing the previous detail.

I've been going through my pitifully sparse stash of poetry books, and keep finding ones that are so, so great. I really should be dog-earing all the pages or something, but I'll just leave them alone for another four years or so- enough time to forget them and rediscover them all over again.

Here's one of my new favorites:

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

- ee cummings


p.s. Toby can fight with Coconut while laying down, and she has all four paws on his face somehow. He is the gentlest big brother/cousin I've ever seen.

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