The Antiphon I Keep by the Sink

Every morning I set a cup at the sink  
as if to hold small absolutions: coffee grounds,  
a lemon rind, the slow drip someone promised to fix.

Light finds the basin in a single clean sliver,  
an incision opening the dull lid of the world. I cup it:  
not like a creditor, but like a child who knows  
how to return a gift with both hands.

I give the water its brief work: to soften, to loosen,  
to take the stain away without asking for fame.  
The sink is a small altar: porcelain wide as a palm,  
and I, half-robed, invent a liturgy of rinsing.

When the cup fills with used things the house keeps,  
I do not mourn; I bless. Soap-slick fingers, a dishcloth folding  
like a petition, the quiet way a body allows itself to be cleaned.  
Everything offered is also opened toward being received.

If the day asks what I will bring, I press the cup to my lips:  
a dribble of humility, a mouthful of thanks, the thin music  
that cups and hands make when they meet; an antiphon:  
leaving something behind and coming forward are the same prayer.

​--
David Anson Lee is a physician and writer whose work often explores the intersection of faith, memory and the healing arts. Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, he now lives in Texas, where he writes poetry and fiction grounded in gratitude, attention and the quiet movements of grace. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals.