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Susan Kelly-DeWitt: Psalm for Sunrise
Let starlight fade in the East.
Let the horses of dreaming ramble
home slowly from their sweet dark pastures.
Let the sun nourish us like wheat.
Let me tidy the quilts
and the flesh-scented sheets.
Let my feet step forth gently
and my heart pump strongly.
Let the kettle cry out
on its bed of blue flame.
Let bee song and crow song rise.
Let the sound of the waking city arise
and the day in its glory bless us.
~~~~
Former Wallace Stegner Fellow, Susan Kelly-DeWitt is a poet and visual artist who lives in Sacramento, California.
Copyright 2024 Susan Kelly-DeWitt. From Frangible Operas (Gunpowder Press, 2024)
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Thank you so much for all the lovely comments!
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A lovely prayer of a poem💖
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Yes, it is.
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I was late to meditation this morning as I read and contemplated this poem. This is a poem I want to bathe in, reread, read before I fall asleep, read when I awake.
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Meditation followed by a Kelly-DeWitt poem sounds ideal.
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A tone intimate, hushed, sacramental. Though proceeding in ordinary time from one act to another, the hymn nevertheless is suffused with a holy timelessness. Each jussive utterance is heard in a still, contemplative moment while also stepping softly into the next moment. A poem offered in the liminal space between stars fading out of view and sunlight coming into view. Presence, presence, presence—the answer to our yearning.
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What lovely praise for the poem, Therese. Thank you!
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Painting a picture of a new day with words. What a gorgeous poem.
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Thank you for sharing this beautiful poem today.
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This nourishing Psalm of dawn, along with the accompanying sunrise image, will now grace my breakfast spot. It’s the reminder of the new beginnings (or continuations) we all long for. I would add one personal addendum, trite though it might seem: let there be a cup of fresh brewed coffee, its steam rising like an offering of thanks, in front of the Psalm for Sunrise.
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These are lovely, solitary poems, I read them all. What a perfect offering to start or end a year. Tidy as a carefully lived in room—everything at the service of function and sight. My Cousin Meredith lived 20 years at 8 Spring Street on the edge of the Bowery. She painted, cooked, and slept beneath a blue spread in that single space, the dining table her father built for her, rolled away from the tub with claws, so she could bathe; nothing extra, nothing missing—like Susan Kelly-Dewitt’s poems, her life a beautiful psalm.
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Like you, Susan is a painter as well as a poet which I think gives a poet a special vision, a way of seeing light and color and landscape.
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