"Why This Child?"

Words are like flowers in a summer field,
when I reach to pick them they often yield
unwillingly, or wither in my hand,
limp and useless, not nearly as grand
as before I gathered them on demand.

And today someone asked me, “Why this child?”
“Why her, so foreign and Eastern-styled?
Why do you want her?” The words would not come,
in all that bright meadow of words there were none
to declare the reasons my heart calls her home.

My mind like a new-planted field gently lies,
quietly holding the hows and the whys.
We stand at the deep edge of need, she and I,
across the cold seasons we silently fly
to warm one another, and words don’t tell why.

For words are like flowers, delicate, rare
and when I would pick them, are not always there.
As sunlight and shadows on field flowers dart,
or in dim forests ferns flourish apart,
words sometimes don’t tell us what blooms in the heart.

Lori Hess from Spokane Washington

WACAP newsletter, January 1976