Reminders

The poem came on the blue heron's breast,
through the breeze in the blackberry bushes
and gushed her stanzas along the creek.

We embraced warmly and it felt good

to look into her eyes again,

but I couldn’t hear a word she said.

I wanted to listen, but

with my fidgety hands behind my back,

I walked through the park like a charlatan monk.

Said hello to a spider and ripple after ripple.

A woman said a yellow-jacket had put on a show. (The cute little guy.)
She said, with a smile that all creation could love,

that she wasn't compassionate enough towards herself.

I wanted to hug her.

Laid in the grass in thought as I watched

dozens of tiny birds in the branches above me. I’m like them

living a countdown life; busy flitting from here to there.

On cue, a baby acorn landed on the middle of my forehead.

A peculiarly precise place to fall as if to respond, “Pay attention.

Inside each tick and tock is the pause of now.”

I pressed pause.

When was the last time I shut up for long enough

to watch the clouds roll by?

To remember I am more than just a body?

I used to labor poems to existence, carried the weight of them

until they collapsed onto the page, but on this day

she tapped me on the shoulder

and reminded me who I was.

IG: @daydreamifications