from Giving Rocks to Rocks
Ellen Bass
and The Book of Hours
Joyce Sutphen

All:
We lift one rough weight,
making it sacred,
the way one moment can be raised out of the river
of our lives.

Reader:
There was that one hour sometime
in the middle of the last century.
It was autumn, and I was in my father’s
woods building a house out of branches
and the leaves that were falling like
thousands of letters from the sky.

Reader:
And there was that hour in Central Park
in the middle of the seventies.
We were sitting on a blanket, listening
to Pete Seeger singing “This land is
your land, this land is my land,” and
the Vietnam War was finally over.

All:
We lift one rough weight,
making it sacred,
the way one moment can be raised out of the river
of our lives.

Reader:
I would also include one of those
hours when I woke in the night and
couldn’t get back to sleep thinking
about how nothing I thought was going
to happen happened the way I expected,
and things I never expected to happen did—

Reader:
just like that hour today, when we saw
the dog running along the busy road,
and we stopped and held on to her
until her owner came along and brought
her home that was an hour well
spent. Yes, that was a keeper.

All:
We lift one rough weight,
making it sacred,
the way one moment
can be raised out of the river
of our lives. Pain
sharp enough can do it,
or the blade of joy whetted
to a brilliant edge.