Welcome to Sunday Poetry.  If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration here.    

What’s your part?  Just slow down a little and come along for the read–or sometimes, for the listen. No analysis needed or required here. Let the poem sink in and move you wherever it may. If you’d like to tell us what the day’s poem means in your life, or what word or phrase you’ve chosen to reflect on in the coming week, or where those reflections have taken you, we would be honored to have you comment. 

Just as I remembered it was time to choose this week’s poem, Now I Become Myself by May Sarton appeared in my RSS feed from  The Writer’s Almanac.  If you’ve read the past two poems, this one will seem to be the third of a set.  All three are, in some part, about stopping and listening, about paying attention.  First, for a moment, then at the beginning of a day, and now, as life winds down and catches up with the poet who finally stops running.

I particularly love: “I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people’s faces.”   Haven’t we all?  Yet when we stop, when we pay attention, how different our lives become.  “O, in this single hour, I live All of myself and do not move.”

May Sarton was a novelist, poet and particularly recognized for her journals.  She died in 1995 but left behind an amazing legacy.