I’m happy to share that my poem “Amazing Grace” is posted this morning at Your Daily Poem, an on-line journal. About this poem, the editor, Jayne Jaudon Ferrer, says:
“Today is the birthday of John Newton who wrote the beautiful hymn, “Amazing Grace.” Penny’s poem not only pays tribute to that song and occasion, it also ties right in with the travel theme on which we’ve been focusing the past few days. Says Penny, “This was written some years ago when [my husband] and I lived in the magical landscape of Northern New Mexico. I miss the “land of enchantment” and the times Bill and I shared there. I’ll get back there one of these days but, for now, I have the sea.”
Hope you enjoy the poem, and that if you have not been there, you get to Echo Canyon up in O’Keeffe country sometime in the future. The Canyon is in the Georgia O’Keeffe country of Northern NM, and the landscape is absolutely breathtaking. The spiritual beauty of the Canyon needed to be celebrated, so I sang my favorite song. Amazing Grace echoed around me, and the tourist’s request for me to sing the song again was an extra blessing.
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Here’s the poem just in case the link doesn’t work for you:
Amazing Grace by Penny Harter
in Echo Canyon, New Mexico
Deep in the canyon, I begin to sing Amazing Grace. Far above us, white-throated swifts dart in and out of crevices in this curved embrace of red rock holding the cerulean sky.
That was my mother’s favorite song. Please sing it again, another tourist asks, her eyes filling.
Each phrase shimmers around us, counterpoint to canyon winds; ancient sediment flows down the rock-face onto a bed of red dust; the stone lion crouched on the edge of the highest cliff lowers his head, and the dust rises.
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