Sunday, October 28, 2012

"What I Have Found" - A Poem by John R. Leax



Watercolor rainbow by a small daughter
with a big heart and imagination


"What I Have Found"
by John R. Leax
from his book Grace is Where I Live

This place that claims my midlife
labor is not an Eden I have made.
It is a place of trial.
My hope resides in yielding
to what calls me still to stay.

No charming serpent curls
about my arm and whispers
in my ear.  But I am tempted
nonetheless.  Like Homer
I take the stories of my people,
I give them shape, and hand
them down.  What I pass on
is truth made new--half-truth
spun through kind invention.

The world I make is finer
than the world I know.  How else
contain the bitterness, the pain,
the grief?  I have not lied.

I say my words; I seek
the wholeness of the world.
Like Homer I am blind.
I see what is not here.
I see this place by word
and grace a new creation.
That word is what I've found.
That grace is where I live.



~*~*

Blitz-skimming through Google Reader, I found a review of a different book by Leax and recognized his name as the poet of "What I Have Found" which I read a few years ago.  My e-mail account is a virtual file cabinet of things I have tucked away or shared, so it was easy enough to find.  I had sent this one to a cousin.

Read it carefully!  What do you think it means?  Is it talking about authors and story-tellers only?  Or can it be for mothers-who-create-beauty-and-order-in-chaos as well?

Leave a comment!

Virginia

P.S. I am a poet, too.  Here is the index of some of my poems, which are linked on a few of my blogs.   Feel free to leave a comment on them, too!

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