It is so little, I think,
what a few words can do,
and yet today,
after reading
a very small poem
my heart opened so wide
a whole life rushed through—
such a current of love,
somehow contained
in the banks
of so few words.
It carried me,
that tiny poem,
as I walked through snow,
carried me as I wept,
carried me as I taught
and planned and paid bills.
It carried me as if
I were a Roman general
in a chariot, carried me
as if I were Venus on a wave,
carried me as if I were me,
a woman grateful to be carried
through a day by a poem,
its words not only
cradling this heart,
but becoming the heart itself.