Anne Sexton~my day’s benediction

I was looking at the books on my shelves tonight for the Women Unbound Reading Challenge and came across a poem I’d forgotten. Once I read it anew, I wondered how it was possible to forget something so beautiful. Admittedly, I do it all the time. But tonight, I’m grateful for forgetting because finding and remembering felt brand new, and needed, and lovely, and like a gift. My day’s benediction.

The Rowing Endeth

I’m mooring my rowboat
at the dock of the island called God.
This dock is made in the shape of a fish
and there are many boats moored
at many different docks.
“It’s okay,” I say to myself,
with blisters that broke and healed
and broke and healed –
saving themselves over and over.
And salt sticking to my face and arms like
a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca.
I empty myself from my wooden boat
and onto the flesh of The Island.

“On with it!” He says and thus
we squat on the rocks by the sea
and play — can it be true –
a game of poker.
He calls me.
I win because I hold a royal straight flush.
He wins because He holds five aces.
A wild card had been announced
but I had not heard it
being in such a state of awe
when He took out the cards and dealt.
As He plunks down His five aces
and I sit grinning with my royal flush,
He starts to laugh,
and the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth
and into mine,
and such laughter that He doubles right over me
laughing a Rejoice-Chorus at our two triumphs.
Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs
the sea laughs. The Island laughs.
The Absurd laughs.