I tried to write you in a poem—

I swear I did not lack the will!

Yet all the same, my failed attempt

Betrays a certain lack of skill.

 

My clumsy pen has not the craft

To slip your heart inside these lines.

My feeble art could never hope

To paint your mind in mortal rhymes.

 

For how could I express your faith

In every creature’s deepest worth—

Or how you search the furthest depths

To find the glories of the earth?

 

Or how could I contain the way

You gather up my tears and sighs—

Then straighten out my crooked thoughts

And point me gently to the skies?

 

No, I could never think to write

Within my paltry little poem

Your infinite capacity

To live and learn and long for home.

 

God bless my failure, then, to make

Your soul into these stanzas bleed—

For then I fear you might become

The only poem I’d ever read.