No
one will believe me when I proclaim that I Heard
the Voice of Jehovah Poet twinkling In
the Mister Softee truck song, exhaling sighs In
the ignition of buzz saws, blessing-sprinkling In
the dandelion-white whispers of stale air, Clearing
throat and “ahem”ing jack hammers Under
my city window. Who will let me share This
mystery sounding – His staccato stammer? The
devil is in the details. So is Heaven! Don’t
wait for castrated angels bearing trumpets. God
calls us now head-on. Disguised as our
brethren, Our
hairstylists, the homeless and the local strumpets, Messengers
sent by the Most High bark, bong, quack, coo, Squeak,
screech, clatter-bang and whistle Dixie for you.
Anne
Babson's
work has recently appeared in Iowa Review, The Chrysalis Reader,
Southampton Review, Bridges, Barrow Street, Connecticut Review, Rio
Grande Review, English Journal, The Madison Review, Atlanta
Review, which gave her an International Merit Award, California
Quarterly, Wisconsin Review, The Red Rock Review, and many other
publications. She won the Columbia Journal Prize and the Artisan
Journal contest, and was nominated for both 2001 and 2005 Pushcart
prizes. As
a poet, I listen carefully for the voice of inspiration in the oddest
places, not in clouds of blooming daffodills but in the things I am
more likely to encounter in a complex urban contemporary world.
For me, the sublime is a fundamentally spiritual encounter with the
otherwise mundane. It is the poet's job, in my estimation, to
ferret this out for the non-poets, because they can't see joy in the
same places that the poet can see it.
