Poetry on Thursday

I have been so taken with Barbara Kingsolver's second volume of poetry, How to Fly, that I ordered her first book of poems, Another America/Otra America. Published in 1998, Kingsolver has written poems about war, parenting, personal/national trauma, man's inhumanity to man, abuse, family and human rights, and social justice. Additionally, the poems are published in English on the right-hand page, and in Spanish on the left-hand page. 

These poems are powerful, disturbing, and haunting, and the fact that they are accessible in both Spanish and English makes them even more so. 

Ordinary Miracle

Barbara Kingsolver

I have mourned lost days

when I accomplished nothing of importance.

But not lately.

Lately, under the lunar tide

of a woman's ocean, I work

my own sea-change:

turning grains of sand to human eyes.

I daydream after breakfast

while the spirit of egg and toast

knits together a length of bone

as fine as wheatstalk.

Later, as I postpone weeding the garden

I will make two hands

that may tend a hundred gardens.

I need ten full moons exactly

for keeping the annual promise.

I offer myself up: unsaintly, up

transmuted anyway

by the most ordinary miracle.

I am nothing in this world beyond the things

one woman does.

But there are eyes that once were pearls.

And here is a second chance where there was none.

Kingsolver, Barbara. "Ordinary Miracle." Another America/Otra America, Seal Press, 1998. 

You can read more about the author here. 

I wish you mindfulness, peace, ordinary miracles, the ability to recognize them, and some poetry as this week winds down.