It feels like the world’s gone mad, doesn’t it?

In a state of anxiety, I still turn to my mother. She’s been gone for more than five years, but she left us her grace, her prayers, her poems …

state of grace

Spring comes
with her curriculum of clouds

we walk in wind this morning
to the high gate

in our home garden now
the ten red tulips rise to rally love
appropriate both sun and clouds
the stalking star
those cisterns of the sky

~ joan vayo ~ April 17, 1990

grace after meals

it is enough to be reading
this book before bedtime
by one light only in the house

by one light
and by a star perhaps
outside
over the high roof
or inside
under a slow smile

~ joan vayo ~ June 5, 1986

The Graces

The three old women who write poetry
were young once
guiding their children and their gardens
flicking their bright hair back with busy fingers
drinking cold tea with orange slices
wearing gold earrings every morning

That day when all the children were in school
and all the vegetables in jars
the three began to write
one on an old New England farm
one in the desert one by the sea
they saw things differently
and yet the same
the sun and moon and stars enticed them
one wrote about a weather without snow
another of her birds migrating south before the snow
the third one of her birds returning from the north

All three saw color in the distance
and darkness close at hand
they marched their pens along the unlined paper
and plunged into a lake of light

~ joan vayo ~ September 26, 1999

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“The Graces” © 1999, “state of grace” © 1990, “grace after meals” © 1986, Joan Vayo. All rights reserved.

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