Garish Dawn (an Amazing Poem By Carrie Beyer)

At the Festival for Faith and Writing two weekends ago, I went to a poetry open mic and heard an amazing poem called “Garish Dawn” by a woman named Carrie Beyer who has a website here that you should check out. One of the best things about the writers’ conference was my discovery of rich, deep Christian poetry. I got really cynical about poetry shortly after I graduated college and couldn’t get any of mine published in literary magazines. It all seemed like uber-pretentious, obscurantist drivel (if you don’t know what those words mean, it’s people writing crap that only a very small percentage of the population can understand). Anyway, this poem is awesome; It’s about Mary’s reaction to finding out she’s pregnant with Jesus. The one word I didn’t know was “garish,” which just means really bright and loud. There’s a lot of other Christian poetry that is way more thoughtful than trashy Christian pop lyrics but accessible and understandable at the same time. Please go to Carrie’s site and support her!Garish Dawn

If light were to slap me up

and I, unprepared, fell to my knees stunned

would that then be the end of me–killed

by light? In the extravagance of dawn,

with all its garish colors

screaming across the horizon,

who would have thought I could look

that in the eye and live?

Or that Mary, with God of the worlds

to conceive a child–who would have thought

she could be inhabited by infinity?

Let it be unto me,