Poetry Sunday

I anointed myself with White Shoulders
and wore the delicate netted

stole over the finely knitted stole handed down
to me from Ginny, the poet.

I looked like a poet-priest with Ukrainian colors,
even the yellow sunflower felted

onto the netting. It was Poetry Sunday at church,
our ritual in April, when we say aloud

our favorite poems or poems we wrote ourselves.
I read the one about my father,

“Lost and Found,” written during our practice
here together for Lent, a poem a day,

and the people in my church came together
in each other’s joy and woe, rapt,

attentive in the way poets appreciate, and apostles,
who want us to listen to the good news.

We wept softly to ourselves when Mark read
“Bread and Music,” by Conrad Aiken,

since his wife had died in August and “bread
I broke with you was more than bread”

resonated in all the ways in our church.
I think what I am handing down I am handing out

now—yes, poems read aloud, and good will,
and reverberations of the kindnesses heaped on me

over the years, all the generosity and love
still rippling out, circles on a pond,

or light acting simultaneously as particle and wave
in its endless mystery.

— Babs