Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White and today is Monday, April 5th.

And today I'm going to break daily poem tradition a little bit and I'm not going to tell you anything about the poet before I read today's poem.

And I think you'll understand that in a couple of minutes. I'm going to read the poem to you, and then I'll tell you a little bit

about our poet, make a few remarks about the poem, read it again, and that'll be today's show.

So here we go. Today's poem is called Alter Smoke, and this is how it goes.

Somewhere inside of me, there must have always been a tenderness, for the little lived with things a man crowds upon his worn fistful of earth.

Somewhere inside of me, there must have always been a love, made to fill the square aggressiveness of new cut hedges and feed the pursed green mouths of baby leaves.

A love made to understand the way grass cuddles up to porch steps leaned upon by time

and why dandelions nudged the stones along the walk.

A love for garden hose, curled sleeping in the noon hush, coolness trickling lazily from its open mouth,

for shingles starched and saucy and white paint, and an old rake rusty with dreams of tangled grass

and butterflies. A love for candle flames, like pointed blossoms on their ghostly stems,

and frost forests breathing wonder on the parlor windows. Somewhere inside of me, there must have

always been an altar of hewn stones upon which my love casts these burnt offerings to make a sweet savor unto my soul give me the

strength my god to scatter my fires and tumble the altar stones and confusion give me the strength to raise my eyes

so that hard and sharp across my heart like shadow cut on mountain rock will fall the agony of sunset so that i can see the laughter of clouds spun into the blue web of infinity so that my soul can reach out and melt in the sweep of forever above all these.

I absolutely love this wonderful poem. And you can hear the mature voice of a poet here, right?

The central idea, of course, of the poem being a love for all of the beauties of the world and a lifting up of the heart in worship through experiencing the beauties of the world.

I particularly chose this poem to read today, the day after the Christian celebration of Easter, in which the new life of spring is connected then, of course, with the new

life of Christ, risen from the grave. So I love that aspect of the poem. It's not specifically an

Easter poem, but has that Easter feeling to it, that feeling of coming back to life and experiencing

new life through nature and that calling the soul beyond itself,

...