"The Glass and the Bowl"

From a Native American writer during National Poetry month:

I love the writings of Louise Erdrich, a prolific author of novels, including Love Medicine and The Plague of Doves, children's books, including The Birchbark House  and poetry, including Baptism of Desire that contains this lovely poem.

Her poem captures that incomparable fullness of feeling that comes unbidden in precious moments of parenting when "nothing seems withheld" even in the "absence of refuge in the design". Those moments are sweet and we need them.


The Glass and the Bowl


The father pours the milk from his glass
into the cup of the child,
and as the child drinks
the whiteness, opening
her throat to the good taste
eagerly, the father is filled.
He closes the refrigerator
on its light, he walks out
under the bowl of frozen darkness
and nothing seems withheld from him.
Overhead, the burst ropes of stars,
the buckets of craters,
the chaos of heaven, absence
of refuge in the design.
Yet down here, his daughter
in her quilts, under patterns
of diamonds and novas,
full of rich milk,
sleeping.


Louise Erdrich

What sweet moments are you savoring?