Use the player below to listen to my sermon from this past week. Susan Neale’s excellent poem is below the player.
Faith
by Susan Neale
This is where the shell breaks,
and the wet chick emerges, ugliest thing in the world.
Bulging blueberry eyes squinched tight,
wobbling with useless wings akimbo
like the shoulderblades of little girls learning to swim;
it’s slick and scrawny as a bathed cat.
And those who see it, must love it,
with its dumb buck egg tooth,
must forget the dead robin fledgling found in the driveway,
cross their fingers and watch it fluff open
like a paper umbrella, into the yellow puffball
peeping windup toys are dreamed from —
nimble and easy in itself, bright-eyed bird cheeping for its mother.
This is the tightrope we walk now
between sodden hatchling and beloved child,
and it only takes holding your breath
the hard minute, to get across.