Discernment
Think back:
what has remained?
Who said something
that rang out,
a bell in your heart,
chiming its sweet
tone, sustaining
your joy, lifting
you above the grind
and grime of today
into a passable way
forward?
Even if it only moved
in you, and not
in the world, no one,
nothing, can take away
that tone, that toll,
ringing true at your
center.
No matter how many
shifts pass with no
discernible change,
your days do make
a life, and you too
might be the bell
that calls someone
else to joy, that echoes
the true timbre of their
soul, that rings in new
possibility in each
moment even when
they all seem
the same.
Deb Baker lives in New Hampshire and works for a climate justice organization and in a hospital. Since childhood, she has felt connected to her kin in creation, who appear along with her human relatives in many of her poems. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Bellevue Literary Review, Third Wednesday, Naugatuck River Review, Hawk & Whippoorwill, Radix, humana obscura, New Feathers Anthology and The Penwood Review.
Amethyst Review 