Reply to a Poet

[My friend and fellow poet, Thomas D, wrote a poem "Tenth Letter to a Poet"  which touched me, and inspired the following reply.]


Your sunburst description
brings me at once
to bulletin inserts
in a little country church.
How the skies were torn
over fields of corn and soybeans,
over pastures and orb-eyed cows,
over dips of timber . . .
over land given, long ago,
in a dead daughter's name--
Estella, who wanted to be a missionary.

Ours was just one more tale
of frailty and faithfulness
as we left those white walls
and led the somber line
behind my father's hearse.
The gray October sky
cried light through thin places
of cloud. My mother took it
as a sign of God's presence.

Today, the children and I
read Jonah's story--
how God finds us,
how even a runaway and fish
may prefigure resurrection.
I am glad of your reminder
that God can find us even in
our weakest words.