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Callings
Nancy Shaffer

When you heard that voice and knew finally it called for you
and what it was saying
- where were you?
Were you in the shower, wet and soapy, or chopping cabbage late for dinner?
Were you planting radish seeds or seeking one lost sock?
Maybe wiping handprints off a window or coaxing words into a sentence.
Or coming upon a hyacinth or one last No.
Where were you when you heard that ancient voice,
and did Yes get born right then
and did you weep?
Had it called you since before you even were,
and when you knew that, did your joy escape all holding?
Where were you when you heard that calling voice,
and how, in that moment, did you mark it?
How, ever after, are you changed?
Tell us, please, all you can about that voice.
Teach us how to listen, how to hear.
Teach us all you can of saying Yes.

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