Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in the book,

found again after two hundred years . . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper . . . .

When the young girl who starves

sits down at a table

she will sit beside me . . . .

I am food on a 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 with you

when you think to call my name . . . . 

Jane Kenyon, Collected Poems (Graywolf, 2005)