cultivates the Christ-like faculty of looking at what is temporal and discerning what is eternal. As Jesus saw splendor in the lilies of the field, the poet, too, perceives power in everyday places. Poet William Carlos Williams understood that everything depends on "a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens."
A poet also divines the divine in the most unlikely places. J.D. Salinger's alter ego Buddy Glass talked about his poet brother Seymour who "had a distracting habit, most of his adult life, of investigating loaded ashtrays with his index finger, clearing all the cigarette ends to the sides -- smiling from ear to ear as he did it -- as if he expected to see Christ himself curled up cherubically in the middle, and he never looked disappointed."
It was Buddy who urged his sister Franny, an aspiring actress, to "act for God," and brought her back from the brink of a breakdown by reminding her always to act for the Fat Lady in the back row, assuring her: "There isn't anyone anywhere who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know -- listen to me, now -- don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."
Jesus put it straight: "I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me. I tell you the truth, whenever you did this to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me."
That is poetry. That is theology. That is real.