Today's Poem of Presence

One Heart, by Li-Young Lee

The poet reminds us where day begins. Attention turns to sky. I lift my eyes to the stars before dawn in the cool air I am warmly bunded in. Except my cheeks. It’s nice to refresh my exposed cheeks to the chilly air. What I want now is to make time every day for reverence. And I usually do this. I want to do it more, and with more intention. What else is there to do? You want reverence? Poets trade in reverence. This is what I want. To be under the sky of Li-Young Lee’s poetry as well as the sky of earth’s dawn.

Am I the falling thing? Or, is it my friends who are falling? Is it my child who is falling? It’s not my grandson who is falling. Because he is ground and he is aware of sky. A child reminds you where day begins. Sky. When my daughter, his mother, was two, she looked up at the sky one morning and said, when daddy gets home he will get the moon for me and I will hold it in my hands and I won’t break it. The moon is not a falling thing. My grandson wants to go to the moon and eat all the cheese. The falling thing is my spirit unless I remember poetry and sky, children and the holding of the moon. Moon will cradled and eaten and enjoyed. Poetry is the art of holding the fragile thing so it can be eaten and eaten and eaten at either end of day. I choose the moon today. I choose to not break it. Li-Young Lee, at a poetry reading I was fortunate to attend recently, said, “There is an altar in the center of every poem.” Every day I am wondering what this remarkable statement means. What it means, to me today is this: sky. There is a sky at the center of every poem.