Quick
before our bodies turn themselves in,
with a reverence reserved for the dead touch me
because I want to remember how beautiful I am.
While Spring snows around us, cracking her eggs
on our windows, in her meager dress of yellowing-white,
because I want to rise into today.
So why the urge to render something
more fragile than this?
Why, always, the soul blowing glass?
The soul, once again, filling the lungs
with smoke because a memory of regret sweats
in the plastic sleeve of a family
album. Because there’s a snapshot caught
between the pages of some thick book:
my heavy 20 year old frame setting off
the 60lb weight of a dying mother. Because
somewhere, there’s a negative slide
of my heart. Because and because and because
I’m sure there’s a photo
in some drawer that shows me dressed in black.
But I want to devote myself to the mystery
of this afternoon. I want to honor this falling night, worship the
hour vanishing
between six and seven. This moment
where I’m standing against myself and against you with a taste in my mouth
that’s yolk.
With Bob Marley taking that one long drag
on the refrigerator door.
With the smell of spring.
By Olena Kalytiak Davis from “And Her Soul Out of Nothing”
(Thanks to Mollie for this beautiful suggestion!)
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Have some poems you treasure that you’d like to share with fellow aid workers and do-gooders? Please send them my way at email.howmatters@gmail.com!
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One of my favorites! So glad you posted it 🙂