Briefly it Enters and Briefly Speaks
by Jane Kenyon
I am the blossom pressed in a book,
opened 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
I am the 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 there when you think to call my name