We are celebrating National Poetry Month and today I get to introduce you to one of my favorite contemporary poets.

I had the immense pleasure of meeting Annie Lighthart several years ago. She is a generous and genuine soul. I love all of her poetry, but I wanted to share this one with you because it illustrates "Noticing the Sacred" which is where my heart is right now. I remember those exhausting early days of parenting, waking up in the middle of the night to the cry of a child. These moments become luminescent when Annie shines a light on them, helping us to notice the sacred in the ordinary.

The Hundred Names of Love

The children have gone to bed.
We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly
behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing
warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together
and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet,
the forgiveness of that sleep.

Then the one small cry:
one strike of the match-head of sound:
one child’s voice:
and the hundred names of love are lit
as we rise and walk down the hall.

One hundred nights we wake like this,
wake out of our nowhere
to kneel by small beds in darkness.
One hundred flowers open in our hands,
a name for love written in each one.

~Annie Lighthart

Want more? She has a beautiful book of poems here.

And her website is here.