Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.” ~Carl Sandburg

Amazing, isn’t it — how small things can hold so much? With the precision of a haiku poet, Jane Kenyon delivers a heart-load of emotion in this short but powerful poem. Anyone who loves the domestic arts will fall in love with Kenyon’s poetry. She had a gift for revealing the sacred in the mundane, reminding us that even the most ordinary objects we own can represent a wealth of memories, stories, and lessons. –CL

What Came to Me
By Jane Kenyon

I took the last
dusty piece of china
out of the barrel.
It was your gravy boat,
with a hard, brown
drop of gravy still
on the porcelain lip.
I grieved for you then
as I never had before.

–-Reprinted from Jane Kenyon Collected Poems; Graywolf Press; 2005–

— Kitchen photo by Cindy La Ferle —

This post is part of a weekly poetry appreciation series. Want more? Check out Poems to Inspire in the CATEGORIES column at right.