My wonder has a hill in it,
grassy and steep, and a sky
so blue it feels as if I must have
imagined it. There are gravestones
there, some so old and covered
with orange lichen I can’t read the dates,
and other stones engraved with names
of people I love. My wonder has in it
the scent of fallen leaves and the warm
laughter of women, bright yellow feathers,
and a song I once learned from listening to the air.
A candle filled with marigold petals
that stays lit despite the wind
and sometimes a Stellar’s jay flying through.
There is room enough in it for every version
of myself to enter, even the selves
I have yet to meet, even the selves
I might push away, even the selves
I have thought were myself. All of them
slip away. Wandering the hill,
I am certain of little except the fertileness
of not knowing, the necessity for love,
and the gift of being given new eyes.
Posts Tagged ‘wonder’
Oh, Thank You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, cemetery, gratefulness, wonder on November 2, 2025| 6 Comments »
Intention
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged intention, new, wonder on June 26, 2025| 2 Comments »
To wonder. To wonder with no plan
for where it might lead. No strategy
for arrival. No finish line. No pot
of gold. No perfect score. No striving for.
To wonder. To wonder the way a small child
might wonder when seeing a roly poly for the first time—
oh, look at all those legs. Look at how
it curls! Look how it moves again. Feel
how light it is in the palm. Feel how
it tickles as it moves. Imagine
an awareness that new meeting a life form that old.
Can I be that new as I meet this infinite world?
To wonder not just with my mind
but with my belly. To let every neuron
spark. To notice where there is a channel
and imagine the great wing of life
is scraping it clean so the stream might flow
in new ways. To wonder beyond the edge
of the known, and in that spaciousness, play.
The Secret of Contentment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged contentment, knowing, wonder on May 29, 2025| 8 Comments »
To be the seed and not
wish to be the flower.
Or to be the flower and
not wish to be seed or rain.
To be the rain and be grateful
to be the rain. Which
is to say, to be the self
and delight in being the self.
But when I say self, I mean
to know the self as seed.
As flower. As rain. When I
say to know, I mean to
ever be in wonder.
At the Bonfire on New Year’s Eve
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, bonfire, falling in love with the world, new year, wonder on January 1, 2025| 4 Comments »
To the list of things I will likely forget,
add the color of the sky tonight
as we stood around the bonfire,
the way the deep blue gave way
to a deeper blue, to a deeper blue,
until it was blue no more—
every moment more lovely
than the moment before.
How many moments of wonder
have I forgotten in just this past year?
The forgetting makes them no
less wondrous. In fact, as I stood
at the bonfire, I was aware of all
the wonder stored in this body,
how it has shaped me, created me,
as much as any food I’ve eaten,
as much as every walk I’ve taken,
as much as any vitamin. And so
I gathered it in me, the vision of sparks
against the clear night sky, and Venus
perched atop the barren tree. The heat
of the flames and the crackle
of trapped moisture turning to steam.
There will be times this next year
when I desperately need wonder,
and though I will likely forget
the particulars of this night,
let me not forget how to be stirred
by beauty, remade by it, even.
So I practice now, this art
of falling in love with the world.
Come tomorrow, I will practice again.
When we gather to wonder about the sacred,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cloth, sacred, wonder, worth on December 7, 2024| 7 Comments »
we begin as separate scraps of cloth,
squares left on the seamstress’s floor.
Perhaps we believe we have nothing to offer
because we are not more whole.
Wonder becomes the needle.
The sacred is green thread.
Communion fills the seams.
And who, or what, is the seamstress?
Of course, we were confused
about our worth. But my god,
it is beautiful when we can’t help but see
how essential we are—the material of us
gathered into the grand cloth.
It is painful to be pierced in the joining.
No one wants to know this.
And yet each time we wonder together,
and wonder, and wonder,
we learn again just how we fit,
how integral we are, how surely
the cloth needs us all.
Wings of Wonder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, eagle, falling in love with the world, wonder 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.
One Threadbare
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, exhaustion, noticing, wonder on January 20, 2024| 4 Comments »
frayed, this wonder,
the world no less filled
with magnificence
Learning to Honor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, cranes, evolution, sandhill cranes, time, wonder on November 20, 2023| 10 Comments »
For ten million years, the sandhill cranes
have trumpeted in their rich, low pitch
and flown over grasslands
as they did today
while we wove our car beneath their V—
oh, their long slender necks,
the slant architecture of their wings—
such elegant things
developing since the Eocene.
How beautifully small I felt then,
a speck in big time,
so lucky to spend even an hour on this planet
at the edge of a marsh where perchance
the cranes are migrating south again
and the heart, astonished, unbidden,
leaps up in wonder and falls in love with life,
a gift of our own brief evolution.
One Sacredness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, breath, wonder on November 10, 2023| 7 Comments »
an altar for wonder—
that small pause
before you speak
After Reading Ross Gay’s “Overheard”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, inner world, Ross Gay, wonder on October 31, 2023| 11 Comments »
May there always be inside me
a little old man with scuffed up shoes,
a hobble in his step,
and hands upturned in wonder.
May he shuffle along
behind me wherever I am
and whisper in awe,
again and again,
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
And may he always
be telling the truth—
may he never be
a parrot for beauty,
but a real witness—
able to see
what I in my sad stupor cannot.
May he find glitter in frost,
the curl in the steam that rises from rot,
the deep rose in the sunset
on the day the boy was shot.
And let me not ignore him
especially when I want to.
Let me hear him and be moved
to open my hands in amazement, too.
And when my own thoughts
are too loud,
when I can’t hear
his quiet, urgent sincerity,
let him bump into me
as passes me by,
let him lead me with his wonder,
both of us limping
toward the light.
To read Ross Gay’s poem, visit here