March 8, 2020
This week we are highlighting the sense of sight. To better appreciate this month’s poet – Jane Merchant – know that she lost her hearing and most of her sight at age 23. She was born with osteogenesis imperfecta and bedridden at age 12.
Yet she wrote more than 2,000 poems – more than 100 for the Saturday Evening Post magazine. Some people who have travelled the world with all of their faculties intact, have not “seen” as clearly as this lovely woman.
The Shell by Jane Merchant
The delicate auroras
In this shell
Are most illustrative
Of ocean swell,
Of rippling light,
Of iridescent foam.
Though I have never left
My inland home
Nor stood on any shore
The dawn tide laves,
I know how sunrise looks
On ocean waves.
