Dear Mr. Yeats

Christian Century, May 31, 2003 by Catherine Abbey Hodges

   Your poem has
   all these years
   made me weep.
   Now, in my early middle age,
   it is a bowl
   the color of pavement
   all full of water
   lapping,
   the sea of Galilee
   I think,
   into which I look
   and see half
   a walnut shell
   bobbing hilarious
   and me
   aboard the doubtful craft
   scanning the rim for linnets
   and their God
   as the wind picks up.
   But who is this
   curled at my feet,
   singing like a cricket
   in the glade at my
   deep heart's core?