"Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks," by Jane Kenyon

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper....

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . .

I am the heart contracted by joy. . . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . .

I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name. . . .

+ Jane Kenyon

Jane Kenyon was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1947, the granddaughter of a fiery Methodist preacher, whose severity frightened her as a child, eventually leading her to turn away from religion for a time. But as an adult, she rediscovered Christianity, and many of her poems reflect her theological imagination (here’s another example). She once was asked how her faith shaped her writing, and she said, “My spiritual life is so much a part of my intellectual life and my feeling life that it’s really become impossible for me to keep it out of my work.” This idea of faith as part of both “intellectual life” and “feeling life” is worth contemplating.