Sometimes, astonished by beauty
the heart fumbles the next beat
and the breath stops—it sounds awful,
right? but you know as I do that these
are the finest moments in life,
when we somehow escape the bells
of the hours and shackles of language
and wade in the edgeless fields of infinity.
But then the involuntary nervous system
kicks in again with its relentless drive
to pulse, inhale, exhale, and blink, and the brain
begins to rifle for a word or two to explain, to share,
perhaps to prove what a strange and beautiful
terrible marvel just happened.