December Daily: poetry

[resonant]

realpestilence prompted: favorite poem and favorite poet.

My favorite poet right now is Walt Whitman. This changes from time to time, but Whitman is meaning a lot to me right now.

I've also always had a soft spot for my adolescent favorite, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and for Don Marquis' Archy and Mehitabel poems. And I loved the early work of Marilyn Hacker, but her stuff spoke less to me once she stopped using poetic forms.

I couldn't really say I have one favorite poem, per se, but here's one I've been finding particularly meaningful for some years.



Angels Among the Servants

Nancy Willard

Build a chair as if an angel was going to sit on it. - Thomas Merton

St. Zita, patron saint
of scrub buckets and brooms,
spiritual adviser to mops,
protector of charwomen,
chambermaids, cooks,
those who wait on us
and mend our ways,

for forty-eight years you
lit the morning fire
in the dark kitchen
of Fatinelli of Lucca
and baked his bread,
till the Sunday you knew
you could not serve

two masters and did not open
the bins of flour or unlock
the treasures of yeast
and water. Telling no one,
you trudged off to Mass,
still wearing his keys
on your belt.

And while you opened your mouth
for the wafer, a coin
minted from moonlight,
angels arrived in aprons
and mixed light and salt,
and kneaded loaf after loaf,
punching them down

for their own good,
and praised the mystery
of bread, which rises to meet
its maker. But who
is the servant here?
The loaf will not rise
till the baker follows
the rules set down by the first loaf

for the ancient order of bread.
St. Zita, bless the fire
that boils water, the air
that dries clothes, and keys
that have lost their doors:
may angels keep them
from the deep river.