I slipped into the river by choice
and the current did not steal me away.
All around me was golden light.
I pulled my hands through clear water,
then raised them to the sky,
To my surprise, I had gathered
from below the surface a shimmering amethyst glitter
now suspended and radiant in the air.
When I woke, I recalled a dream
from two years ago, such desperate days.
I’d fallen in the river by accident
and the current pulled me quickly from shore.
No choice but go through long rapids.
Muddy waves crashed over me.
Whirlpools pulled me down.
I knew it would be hard. I knew I could swim.
Oh, swimmer, you have been carried
by the waters that would drown you.
Great waves. Strong forces. The silt falling out.
Of course, you are weeping with grief, with wonder.
Posts Tagged ‘wonder’
A Tale of Two Dreams
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, healing, river, wonder on September 9, 2023| 6 Comments »
Another Reason to Marvel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged color, flower, praise, tulip, universe, wonder on May 6, 2023| 6 Comments »
The average color of the universe
is not blue, as they thought, but beige—
or so they say after studying
two hundred thousand galaxies—
a fact that makes me stand longer today
beside this tulip as it shamelessly splays
its statistically unlikely yellow and red,
a living manual for possibility—
in all of deep space,
the chance to show up in this garden.
Unscheduled
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bunny, busy-ness, time, wonder on March 29, 2023| 3 Comments »
No matter the day is already planned
to the minute. No matter how pressing
the deadline, the must do, the should.
It takes only a second to look out the window
and see the brown bunny in the brown grass.
It takes only a second to fall in love
with the twitchy nose, the nervous eyes,
the lumpy shape of bunny.
How quickly the known world cants toward awe
when wonder slips in—wonder forged
not from epiphany or greatness
but from the barest instant of meeting what is real.
Changing Wavelengths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged logic, loss, mystery, rainbow, wonder on March 6, 2023| 10 Comments »
The day after you died,
your dad and I stood
on a sidewalk in Georgia
and everything was strange—
I barely knew I was in a body.
I was so in my body.
The muggy air was unfamiliar.
With every sob, I pulled it
into my lungs and it became me.
What I remember:
The sound of airplanes.
The sweet scent of flowering trees.
There were no cars on the road.
It had rained and the night
had not yet come and there,
in the distance, a double rainbow.
I’m a logical woman. I know
what happens when sunlight
enters raindrops in front of me
at a precise angle of forty-two degrees.
And yet.
No one could ever convince me
it wasn’t you, you who had become
more spectral than flesh,
an optical illusion that doesn’t exist
in a specific spot, but, for any who look,
they cannot help but see the real
and radiant truth of it.
To this day, I remember how
those twin rainbows stitched me
back into the world, tethered me
to wonder, to mystery; connected me
to all I cannot understand.
Even now, there are drops falling
down my face. Perhaps, if the light
were just right, one might see
inside them something beautiful.
Redefining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, daughter, reverence, walking, wonder 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.
Short List of Wonders
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, death, faith, miracle, mother, wonder on October 8, 2021| 13 Comments »
Years from now,
I want to remember
the way tears
became white doves
and flew away,
the way stepping stones
appeared to help me
cross an impossible
river, the way
a crumpled letter arrived
from the dead
to proclaim
I am surrounded with joy.
Oh woman who lives
in my skin years from now,
don’t try to pretend
it didn’t happen.
It did. A rainbow
blossomed above
your shoulder.
Your head opened up
to receive golden light.
Life wrapped its strong hands
around your heart.
And when you asked
your son, Are you close,
you felt against your ribs
a knocking
from the inside.
Wonder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged shoes, wonder on April 19, 2021| 4 Comments »
I wear my wonder
like old running shoes—
not elegant,
not sophisticated,
surprisingly inappropriate
in certain rooms.
I notice how others
sometimes wrinkle their noses
at a blatant sporting of wonder,
thinking, perhaps, I must be oblivious
to the dress code:
stilettos of apathy,
high heels of indifference,
boots of cool reserve.
But dang, this wonder
gets me where I need to go
every inch,
every mile, even
across the room.
When everywhere I step
is broken glass,
wearing this wonder
is the only reason
I can move at all.
published in ONE ART: A journal of poetry
Getting Ready
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged advent, bird, hawk, joy, kayleen, wonder on November 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »
What might you need to let go of or “clean out” in order to make room for wonder or joy?
—Kayleen Asbo, Advent and the Arts: The Week of Hope
Just today I walked
in the shadows
and noticed how
they scrubbed me
the way silence sometimes
scrubs a room.
Wonder rushed in.
It wasn’t that I was trying
to keep wonder out,
it’s just that with my schedule
and rigor, I hadn’t left it
space to enter.
If only with mop
and broom I could sweep
out anything
that would keep me
from wonder, from joy.
Instead, the world offers
shadow, stillness,
quietude, loss,
and a red-tailed hawk
in the heart,
circling, circling,
wondering what
it might subtract next.
Several Hours Before Dawn: Another Moon Poem
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, moon, poem, poetry, wonder on January 3, 2019| 2 Comments »
It appears still, the crescent moon,
but it’s moving at 2,288 miles per hour,
its light reaching us in less than two seconds.
This morning, we marvel at it, as if
we’d never seen moon before, its light
somehow touching us newly.
And though we are dashing down
the highway at fifty-eight miles per hour,
watching the moon, I feel something
in me quiet and still. Years ago, a friend told me
it was time to stop writing moon poems.
How to stop when each time
we see the moon, something new in us rises
to meet it? May we always write moon poems,
whether or not anyone reads them.
May we always marvel at the light
and shadow so far past our reach
and yet travelling with us
every day, every night. May it always feel
important, like hope, impossible to touch
and so real, so true.
One Continuation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged journey, poem, poetry, wonder on November 24, 2018| Leave a Comment »
returning from the journey,
as if the return isn’t also
a journey—
as if this journey called home
isn’t also riddled with wonder, surprise