Morning Song

Joanne Lehman

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780873388344
• eBook ISBN: 9781612774367
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Under and out from under the shadow of death Joanne Lehman writes 'in the emptiness between one breath and the next.' Her rural Ohio land-scape is animated with rough and mild weather, red wing blackbirds, hayfields, woodlands, and the sweet and sometimes too-tight lips and rhythms of sectarian life. These poems speak simply, and their mourning, memory, and healing are a balm for times when a little bit of quiet would do us all a world of good. This is a fine first book—as meditative, wise, and joyful as it is bound to local life on our turning earth."—Julia Kasdorf

II

POTTERY MUSEUM

At the pottery museum in East Liverpool they have

all the old dishes, bowls, pitchers, soup tureens and platters—

even a green, four-foot china trophy honoring

the fastest-flying carrier pigeon.

Bowls embellished with gold, stamped on the

bottom with trademarks: Homer Laughlin China Company,

or Vodreys, Rockingham. Everyone back then

knew clay and practiced shaping it into a vessel—

copies of European china—the voices these pieces had.

Here they gather on glass shelves—

none holding water or dough or fine ladies’ calling cards,

Sunday dinner. A life still, in their emptiness.

Even the equipment used to make them remains—

this old iron vise to flatten a dozen hanging

flaps of clay, squeezing water out, preparing a

soggy, malleable slab. Clay, waiting to become

yellow ware, white ware, Grandma’s wedding dishes

crazed with advanced age—gold-glazed rims,

and the lacy, long-extinct fanciful lotus-wear,

a revelation of what all clay might have been.

HYMN SING

It’s the old black hymnal

that makes us sing, really sing

and remember the way we grew

dedicated and hoarse.

Having been given all the words

such a long time ago, we still carry

them in our hearts with their tunes.

It’s been years, maybe never,

since we harmonized like this—

but now sitting at the table in

the unlikely geography of tonight

we pour hymns out

like wine. We hold

the book between us,

handing it back and forth

to remember and reclaim

our liturgy.

The old, old stories

pour forth with their own notes.

The friend who was once just

a sister carries her part.

Jesus and grace outshine sin

and the breath of God

sighs, returning us to

this place.

We rise from the table

graced and amazed,

clay shaped by the potter.

MORNING SONG

I owe my Lord a morning song. How can I help but sing
when God is all in all, and I am one with ev’rything.

—John Bell

The debt on that morning song

the Mennonites owed the Lord

was paid in full yesterday when

the Scottish songwriter innocently

handed our words back to us and

told us about a God who loves

enough to change. Suddenly

the whole congregation was on its feet

singing the new words in their new tune—

as fresh and crisp as winter air

rushing into the lungs of a soul.

Someone will probably miss the hymn

invented in 1890 by Mennonite farmer

Amos Herr, but not those who rose up

jubilant there. The old familiar tune

is called “Gratitude” though it wasn’t until

mid-morning yesterday that we knew

the places our gratitude might take us

or how songs weave themselves into us

and out again when the invocation is

sung in the barn before daylight

while the horses munch their oats

and stomp the beat of ou...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• I
• II
• III