Poetry

Here’s a poem that I should have posted along with the blog piece about Paul and the creek, and would have if I had remembered it. This is from “Sketches of Home” by Christian poet Suzanne Clark. This little book is a collection of poem-essays (are they prose or poetry? – both, I think) which paint pictures from the author’s life over a period of twenty years. Mrs. Clark has an amazing way of capturing joy and grief, hope and love in sometimes quirky lyrical word stories. Really, you have to read the whole book to get the complete flow, but this is one of my short favorites.

Puddle Duck
Where was Emily? I looked all over the house. She was nowhere. I went to the front porch and there in the driveway in a puddle was Emily naked. My little duckling was singing and splashing as trucks and cars barreled down our rained-on street.

I love the incongruity of children – how they pull up mother’s blouse to nurse in public. How they sweetly say, “You’re so beautiful,” when your hair is awry and you have coffee breath. How they pull on your arm when you are hotly being kissed by their father. How they wear plaids with stripes, take too much food, burp in church, and beat you at checkers. They are still free from the fixed order of things, free to strip and shout and recklessly forgive all who have done them wrong.

- Suzanne Clark (Sketches of Home, published by Canon Press)