It’s moving day so let’s read a poem.

Today we move into our house. We open up boxes that were packed on June 25, that long and short summer ago. It will be like Christmas! And, honestly, it will be a little sad because it means we actually live here in this new city. It’s our home now, not some place we parked ourselves for a month or two.

You want to know something new in my life? My being sad has been a sweet reminder lately that God loves me. And yesterday, while I ate a chunk of my last bar of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate (I sort of brought 10 bars with me when I left SF. Don’t judge!) and felt that heavy weight of the loss of place and the ache of needing friends, I was reminded of this dear Jane Kenyon poem (I love her) and the water “filling the pitcher until it spills…”

Happy moving day.

Briefly It Enters, Briefly Speaks

by Jane Kenyon

 

I am the blossom pressed in a book,

found again after two hundred years. . . .

 

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper….

 

When the young girl who starves

sits down to a table

she will sit beside me. . . .

 

I am food on the prisoner’s plate. . . .

 

I am water rushing to the wellhead,

filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .

 

I am the patient gardener

of the dry and weedy garden. . . .

 

I am the stone step,

the latch, and the working hinge. . . .

 

I am the heart contracted by joy. . . .

the longest hair, white

before the rest. . . .

 

I am there in the basket of fruit

presented to the widow. . . .

 

I am the musk rose opening

unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .

 

I am the one whose love

overcomes you, already with you

when you think to call my name. . . .

 

Collected Poems Jane Kenyon (Graywolf Press, 2005)