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Posts Tagged ‘shift’

Today’s Headline

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 11, 2026| 8 Comments »


 
 
And then one day, while I read
aloud to my husband the news
and felt the widening hole in my heart,
he raised his hand to quiet me.
I followed his gaze out the window
to see in the yard a small fluffy thing
with black and white eyespots on its head.
A northern pygmy owl beside our door,
stout body slightly smaller than my fist.
It turned its neck a full half circle
to look at me with bright yellow eyes.
In an instant, I shifted from disgust
with the world to awe. Awe for this
fierce bespeckled miracle, this wonder
of feather and beak and claw, this
small being in the grass looking back
at me as if to say, Here is also the news.
How surprising the world can be.
How quickly, when I let it, amazement
overwrites my fear and makes
of the hole in my heart a home.

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In the Aftermath of Harsh and Puckery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 22, 2012| 2 Comments »


You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
—Alain de Botton

Perhaps they are not beautiful, the choke
cherry bushes all a-blossoming
beside the road. I never used to think
much of their drooping blooms all flopping, moping,
sagging from the limbs like limp white notes
gone flaccid falling off their staffs. And when
out strolling, no one sniffs the air and thinks
oh! the chokecherries! how sweet the odor!

No. But maybe it’s because I’m aging,
maybe cause I’m sagging, too, or maybe
cause life’s walloped me this year, I ran
today from bush to bush and plunged my face
in clumps of bloom and breathed them in, inhaling
bliss, white petals cradled in my hands.

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