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Posts Tagged ‘awe’

The Season

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 6, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Rather not to lift this rotting pumpkin,
its cavern a fuzzy quilt of black, green
and white circles, intricate thread-like
filaments, a moldering world I glimpse
through the sagging holes of the eyes
and the gap where the toothy smile
has curled in on itself. Such disgusting
deliquescence, this clear puddle beneath it.
Of course, the hands would resist to touch it,
and yet, there rises also this awe for the way
life feeds on itself to nourish the whole. What
inside me is ready for such transmutation?
What story, what rule, what old and sturdy should
is ready to change from something solid
and weighty into puddle, then into nothing at all—

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Walking Back from Sanborn Park

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 12, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
Four-foot rattlesnake.
Sunning herself.
Right in the middle
of the road. Strange,
how terror can also
breed awe. For long,
silent moments, I offer
her all my attention.
After she slips into swaths
of sweet clover,
the sky, such a startling blue.
The scent of wild roses,
so stirring, so sweet.

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One Expanding Awe

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 2, 2025| 4 Comments »


                  for Vivian
 
 
when she can’t stop
falling in love with the blush of sky
I can’t stop falling in love with her

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So I Spend It Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 3, 2024| 8 Comments »




Before sleep, I touch it again,
that moment this morning
when I slipped out before sunrise
and sat in the pale blue light
and watched a lone heron
trace the curve of the river
before disappearing behind
golden cottonwoods.
It lasted, what, three seconds?
But those instants of awe
have returned to me again
and again like a coin I spent
on something beautiful
only to find, by what miracle?
it returns to burn a hole
in my pocket again.


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Wings of Wonder

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 13, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
There, in the field,
you catch the flash
of dark brown wings,
the tail a startling white,
just before the great bird
disappears into the pines
and the heart leaps up
at the gift—the thrill.
You almost missed it.
Once you stood
on a long rocky spit
for an hour watching
hundreds of bald eagles
fly and land, swoop and dive.
How is it that only one bird
for only one sliver of a second
could invite a wonder equally strong?
Such strange math—
the way it takes so little
to create a joy so large
so that seeing the eagle,
you lift your arms from your chair
as if you, too, are taking flight,
as if, you, too, might disappear
into the moment and soar.
 

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One Threadbare

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 20, 2024| 4 Comments »

frayed, this wonder,
the world no less filled
with magnificence

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While in the Middle of Many Errands

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 12, 2023| 13 Comments »

At the edge of the Big Five parking lot,
in a tree still fully leafed out in November,
there must have been hundreds of invisible birds
all singing as if singing is what a day is for,
and the riotous song traveled
over the vast black asphalt sea
crossing all the organizing straight white lines—
so much song for such a small tree—
and stunned, my daughter and I stood and listened,
our rush stopped by the glorious commotion,
as if awe is what a day is for,
as if we exist to be stretched ever wider by disbelief,
as if we are here to know ourselves
as part of something greater,
the world calling us again and again
deeper into the mystery.

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Redefining

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 5, 2023| 4 Comments »

Perhaps I thought awe required a symphony
or spinning galaxies or flagrant pink sunsets
or dropping to my knees, but today, it’s as simple
as walking beside my daughter on a quiet back road,
and her ears hurt and my legs are tired and spring
is barely a dream, but on this drab and windy afternoon
surrounded by bare branches and dirty old snow,
I feel it, reverence, how big it is, this love for her,
this wonder for the world, and I thrum
with the great gift of being human,
and the world is vaster, my god, it’s sublime.

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After Attending the Conversation on Awe

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 30, 2022| 5 Comments »


            for Jay
 
 
We stepped into cool autumnal air
ripe with the red scent of tiny crab apples
and charged with the darkling promise of storm.
 
We were well-armed with studies and stories
on why we might want to choose awe—
but awe chose us the way gold chooses aspen,
 
the way love chooses friends,
the way shorter days choose fall,
the way beauty chooses what will die.
 
And aspen leaves whirled all around us
and caught in our hair, and we knew ourselves
as small essential beings in a wide, astonishing world.
 
 
*Hey, friends, just saying that the Original Thinkers Festival program on the Power of Awe was AMAZING!!! If you have never checked out Original Thinkers in Telluride, well, it is great for people who are curious and like to engage in conversations about paradox, science, emotion, the natural world and community. 

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Very, Very Quietly

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 26, 2013| 3 Comments »

IMG_0415

I did not choose
awe today, but the big
pink sky chose me
and steeped me
in fantastic joy—
a drenching of miracle,
an overdose of amazement,
a wild indulgence of bliss—
oh such pink! layers
of rose and deeper rose,
and I did not earn it,
did not first prove my worthiness,
did not beg nor kneel nor fast
nor renounce my name
nor pull the strings
of the lyre nor sing,
all I had to do
was step outside
out of my own way
and open my eyes
and let myself
be gifted.

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