Saints and poets

"Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."

-Thornton Wilder

"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?”

 

"No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.”

-from Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Together they are on the couch, grandmother and granddaughter, eighty years separating them. Curled into the bend of her arm, my bathing-suit-clad daughter sits on my mother's lap, her pony tails bobbing into the side of her grandmother's face as she listens to a favorite story choice, "A House Is Built at Pooh Corner for Eeoyre." And I am grateful.

He spies the abandoned flesh of a newly molted cicada clinging to the house and cannot contain his excitement, his awe. Without hesitation, he moves towards this hollow shell, that which I would thoughtlessly be quick to wipe away, to discard, to discount as ugly. Yet, he sees the beauty in this detritus of metamorphosis left by one of the least of God's creatures. And I am grateful.

Inside the house, with hands immersed in the soapy water of the kitchen sink, I hear his call, "Sing with me," he cries to his twin brother, and the younger cannot resist. Their mouths are open wide, offering to anyone and everyone the gift of their song. Their song is lusty, bold, spontaneous, and uniquely their own. And I am grateful.

Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, 

saying, what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud, 

to be happy again in a new way on the earth!

That's what it said as it dropped, 
smelling of iron, and vanished like a dream of the ocean
into the branches and the grass below.

Then it was over. The sky cleared.
I was standing under a tree with happy leaves, 
and I was myself, and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves at the moment

at which moment
my right hand was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars and the soft rain-
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

Mary Oliver