Shirt Poems—Luci Shaw

by Luci Shaw

How obediently the necessary words arrange
themselves along the line of my typing, their
damp, colored nouns and adjectives pegged on
a clothes-line to dry in sunlight. Mostly it’s

common nouns and verbs, coins worn thin
at the edges. Arriving unasked, they present themselves
day and night, telling their names, talking back
at me. Some shyly reveal their Latin derivations,

their vivid grammatical histories. Often, my journal
fills with words arriving from the open air of memory,
like those bright shirts waiting to be noticed, to be
plucked off the clothes-line, and hung in the word closet.

Then, on some dull day, a new poem shows up—
perhaps thunder, and promised rain. Sometimes
I pluck stories from the morning paper. Yesterday,
I asked divine forgiveness

for irritability, and this noon, for feeding my anger.
Often I offer my fingers to God, listening for words
that sing like song sparrows, like sun breaking through
on a row of white and bright-colored shirts.

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Copyright: Luci Shaw. Used by permission of Paraclete Press

Luci Shaw was the author of numerous volumes of poetry. Shaw has lectured in North America and abroad on topics such as art and spirituality, the Christian imagination, poetry-writing, and journal-writing as an aid to artistic and spiritual growth.

For more poetry from Luci Shaw, pick up her book, An Incremental Life (Paraclete Press), or order a copy of the Rabbit Room’s book of interviews with well-known Christian poets, An Axe For the Frozen Sea.

Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash