The Wisdom of Wild Grace. Christine Valters Paintner

be the nouns that root us here on earth:

      lemon and lilac, worm and wolf, your lips

      and your hands, a paw print in the sand.

      Praise be the places where poems hide:

      the drawer of old socks, the kitchen window,

      the dusty picture frame, and the keychain.

      Praise be the verbs that invite us to new places

      as we wiggle, wonder, wander, and wish,

      flail, flagellate, flower, and fish.

      Praise be the spaces between words that pause us

      interrupt our headlong quest to arrive at some imagined future,

      ask us to be a guest of this moment now.

      Praise be the lines from poems that rise up

      in the dark, meet me in my sorrow and shame

      to bring a lantern, a working latch in the rusty gate.

      I Greet the Muse

      I met my muse today, a red tulip

      with cherry lips open to the sun,

      a chalice of daylight held up

      to my thirsty mouth.

      Another day she comes as the moon,

      large marble making arcs above,

      giving herself away until she’s gone,

      then returns, becoming seed

      and slowly sending white blooms

      into the night again.

      Tomorrow she might arrive

      on thunderous waves of the sea,

      brine in my eyes and throat

      or the soft caverns of shells strewn

      on shore, a reminder

      of the places I long to dwell

      and one day she might land,

      yellow bird on a branch,

      her song calling me to look up,

      glimpse the space between

      her notes where the song lives,

      where the silence speaks all

      I need to hear.