Wonder at the Mystery Surrounding Us

Dear Mary,

When I first discovered your poetry, I found eyes through which to wonder at the mystery surrounding us; a kindred, spiritual sensibility through which to embrace the invisible realities I’d long believed in; and a heart through which to love the world. Thank you for abandoning intellectual distance and inviting the reader to come close, even “dare to pray.” Thank you for writing poetry that didn’t just blow the top of my head off but opened wide my soul.

During this difficult illness, may you sense that “because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning.” Indeed, may you experience his great faithfulness, his unfailing love (Lamentations 3.1, 22-23a, 32).  

And as you do, may you also know what your work has meant to a poet like me, someone who hasn’t studied poetry formally, someone who took you at your word and read all she could get her hands on, then started writing. I still read everything I can but return again and again to your poems so that I remember, most of all, “to pay attention” to my “one wild and precious life.”

Julie L. Moore