There are times when there are words in life. Perfect words. You hear them, and you think to yourself, “Ah. Those are the perfect words.”
Of course, there are the other moments when no words will do, at all. People walk up, and say them to you, over and over again, and you think, “Why?”
This morning, there was no one speaking to me at all. That’s when I happened across a poem by the great woman, Mary Oliver.
Part of it goes, just like this:
“In the spring the blue azures bow down
at the edges of shallow puddles
to drink the black rain water.
Then they rise and float away into the fields.
Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy,
and all the tricks my body knows –
the opposable thumbs, the kneecaps,
and the mind clicking and clicking —
to have wings —
blue ones —
ribbons of flame.”
It goes on. But as I read, there in the very still and quiet of my room, I thought.
Those. Those are the perfect words.
Sometimes life has magic. I believe. It is only in those moments when I have slowed down enough, and became quiet enough, and felt okay enough to be still, is when I have seen — or heard — those magical things.
I can’t explain it, other than that.
But it is a little bit like disappearing, into something better, and coming back again, with the “knowing it” in my back pocket.
If I can remember to carry it with me, the rest of the day, I know the world will be a better place.
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“Keep some room in your heart for the Unimaginable”
— Mary Oliver
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It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
— Lewis Carroll
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You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.
— Rumi
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