Sometimes

Each time I cycle back around to this poem in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems collection seems to be the right time to do so – though I am not sure there would ever be a bad time to read Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh.  In part:

Sometimes things don’t go wrong after all….

Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss;

Sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Only after reading this poem a few times have I come to recognize the hope, the expectation, the faith imbued within that single word – “sometimes.” Hearing it or reading it, I have come to understand the importance of focusing on what follows — which often has a prayer-like quality