This Friday I’m featuring one of my poems again.  It’s called Grace and I don’t really know what to say about it…but I hope you enjoy it.

Grace
by Deborah Stambler

i.

The cat has come in squeaking and calling.
It’s his signal that he has something
he wants us to see.  A bird or a moth.
Something he has hunted, caught.  Usually,
these prizes are still flapping or crawling
and we set them free.  The cat forced
to relinquish his prowess.

It may be that I confuse grace with mercy, but it seems
that you can’t have one without the other.

Once I nursed a boyfriend through
a horrible flu.  His fever high. He sat
in a lukewarm bath.  He came out shivering.
Then wrapped in a blanket and crying, he told me
that his mother loved God more than she loved him.

There are times when grace is our only mercy.
The flicker of dignity in the sick and dying.
My grandmother reliving  a mumbled collage
of stories before she passed away.
My friend Wade asking that I close my eyes
while helping him into a fresh hospital gown
after his fourth surgery  for brain cancer.

ii.

Grace.  The white kouros in the museum.
Luminous from solidity to fingertip.
Mercy. The tree bending in the wind.
But neither is static.  Both have known longing.

Slow, and slow to let grace form the page.
Let mercy read these words and nod in quiet assent.

iii.

My daughter asks if writing poems ever
makes me feel sad.  Yes darling, I feel sad right now.

I do too, she said.  Listening to you read that new poem.
It’s sad except for the part about the cat.

Then she asks if people who are dying, the ones who can
no longer talk, use sign language.  She starts signing
the letters to spell ‘I love you.’

She wants to know how to sign the letter ‘Y’
and asks if I am crying.  Almost,

but not because we were talking about death.
It was gratitude for the grace she gives the poem
that I couldn’t manage on my own.

photo credit: John&Fish via photopin cc