‘look up, startled’

This is my new favourite poem (though that is an ever fluid category).

It comes from Joyce Sidman’s What the Heart Knows, which appears to be a book of poems for children but really isn’t.

I used it last week in a sermon (along with an abundance of T.S. Eliot) to talk about how poetry opens perception and can reach and change us long before we understand.

It reminds me so much of home — and I have just learned that Sidman is from Connecticut and lived in Middletown. But it is of course every moment of waking, of wonder, and of grace almost missed.

Wake with a dream-filled head.
Stumble out into the morning,
barely aware of how the sun
is laying down strips of silver
after three days’ rain,
of how the puddles
are singing with green.
Look up, startled
at the crackle of something large
moving through the underbrush.
Your pulse jumping,
gaze into its beautiful face.
The wary doe’s body,
the soft flames of ears.
As it bounds away,
listen to the rhythm
of your own heart’s disquiet.
Burn into memory
the white flag of its parting.
Before you return
to house and habit,
cast your eyes into the shadows,
where others stand waiting
on delicate hooves.

— Joyce Sidman
What the Heart Knows