Stopping My Heart In Its Tracks

Dear Mary, 

My file cabinet overflowed with poems I loved, all in folders of my favorite poets. One day, overwhelmed, I threw them all out with the newspapers, all but your poems from House of Light.  I have them before me now.

I think how many times I've said, "That is the most beautiful thing in the world": my first granddaughter's face on the day she was born, her golden eyelashes glinting; the ice dancers with their common names--Charlie, Meryl--their power, their strength, their flight; and "Music," I told my last granddaughter, whose eleven-year-old voice is a candle flame, "is the most important thing in the world." 

Then your words, over and over again, stopping my heart in its tracks-- the slim ship of the swan, filled with white flowers--"and it moves on its miraculous muscles as though time didn't exist."  Your words I keep and treasure, with thanks.

Lianne Spidel