She Walks In Beauty

Caroline Kennedy is a champion in promoting poetry in the United States. She has created numerous anthologies of poetry that have honored her own memories, remembered her mother's love for poetry, and helped us celebrate holidays we hold dear to our hearts. Her most recent anthology "She Walks In Beauty" is an amazing collection of poems selected by Caroline to honor a woman's journey. There are so many poems I love in this volume I may have to post a few. When I read this anthology I was touched by how many poems that have moved me in some way were ones she chose to use also.  Tonight I want to share "You Begin".  It reminds me of how much we hold in our hands are we live life. Enjoy.

 

You Begin

by Margaret Atwood

You begin this way: this is your hand, this is your eye, that is a fish, blue and flat on the paper, almost the shape of an eye. This is your mouth, this is an O or a moon, whichever you like. This is yellow. Outside the window is the rain, green because it is summer, and beyond that the trees and then the world, which is round and has only the colors of these nine crayons. This is the world, which is fuller and more difficult to learn than I have said. You are right to smudge it that way with the red and then the orange: the world burns. Once you have learned these words you will learn that there are more words than you can ever learn. The word hand floats above your hand like a small cloud over a lake. The word hand anchors your hand to this table, your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words. This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world, which is round but not flat and has more colors than we can see. It begins, it has an end, this is what you will come back to, this is your hand.