Karen Edmisten linked to this poem yesterday and reading it just about broke my heart. No, it’s not a sad poem, just so beautiful so extraordinary and yet ordinary, the grace of sunlight and babies and daily tasks transformed like water into wine. I read it out loud to Dom and Bella and Sophie and choked up a couple of times and had to pause to regain my composure.
Dom says it sounds like a mommy blogger. It does and yet with that magical way the poetry has of distilling the ordinary into an extraordinary vintage, a magical brew. I’m printing this one off to read over and over. And I just had to repeat the link here, to pass it on, and store it up so I can come back and read it again and again.
Here’s a little taste.
from “Ordinary Life,” by Barbara Crooker:
This was a day when nothing happened,
the children went off to school
without a murmur, remembering
their books, lunches, gloves.
All morning, the baby and I built block stacks
in the squares of light on the floor.
And lunch blended into naptime,
I cleaned out kitchen cupboards,
one of those jobs that never gets done,
then sat in a circle of sunlight
and drank ginger tea,
watched the birds at the feeder
jostle over lunch’s little scraps.
Read the whole poem here
