Sometimes Mondays

Are for poetry. That’s right. Even though I’m not someone who reads poetry frequently, when a book comes recommended by Kym and Margene and Bonny I sit up and take notice and read it.

Many of the poems in Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection are wonderful but this one in particular really stayed with me and I want to share it with you all today.

Listen, Barbara Crooker

I want to tell you something. This morning
Is bright after all the steady rain, and every iris,
peony, rose, opens its mouth, rejoicing. I want to say,
wake up, open your eyes, there’s a snow-covered road
ahead, a field of blankness, a sheet of paper, an empty screen.
Even the smallest insects are singing, vibrating their entire bodies,
tiny violins of longing and desire. We were made for song.
I can’t tell you what prayer is, but I can take the breath
of the meadow into my mouth, and I can release it for the leaves
green need. I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice
of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils. The cardinals’
red song dances in your blood. Look, every month the moon
blossoms into a peony, then shrinks to a sliver of garlic.
And then it blooms again.

I hope this makes your Monday a little bit better than it would have been without it.