How creation dares us into
a wild embrace of what is
too beautiful to ignore. You open
your front door.
Breathe, and all the old dust and confusion
of your life falls behind you.
You are not to obsess about it,
no matter how it calls you.
Instead, bend and examine
closely how the grass has grown
an inch under last night’s rain,
and the peony buds are swelling,
the tips of pink petals already
bursting free like prisoners
wrongly convicted and now
released. There is such generosity
out there, reaching towards you
with hands open, claiming you,
a created being issuing
from the open mouth of God.
Instead, bend and examine
closely how the grass has grown
an inch under last night’s rain,
and the peony buds are swelling,
the tips of pink petals already
bursting free like prisoners
wrongly convicted and now
released. There is such generosity
out there, reaching towards you
with hands open, claiming you,
a created being issuing
from the open mouth of God.
--Luci Shaw (1928- ), poet, editor, and Episcopalian, from The Generosity: Poems (2020).
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