The Holiest Moment

It began, I suppose, at day’s end,
calming yourself before sleep,
reviewing the hours, sifting for
that shimmering moment when
breath and presence and senses
aligned, mirrors circling mirrors
startled your mind into encompassed
awareness, and you paused, irradiated,
ravished like a lover intimate with her own life.
That was it, you said; there was nothing like it
before or after, this was the day’s holiest moment,
and you strung the memory like a jeweled bead
beside the others you’d saved, and rewound the
necklace of chosen insights around your heart
(a miser counting so few coins), glittering and gone:

the burnished paint-spilled sunrise, the shivering
rescued puppy, its joy in finding safe harbor,
your beloved’s voice, eyes, touch, laughter,
the spider’s web, the intentional ant carrying
the articulated leaf, the porcelain bowl of ruby
berries glittering with juice, the kitchen aromas
of your next meal, the rising major chorale or
single minor violin, the whisper of lilac carried
on the rainwashed breeze, the mending embrace
after javelined words carried you too far into pain,
the flash of lightning, or of anger rightly piercing
lies, the unexpected kindness, the stranger’s smile,
the uprush of birdsong, and then finally one night,
old as you are, you see blessings like shining stars
everywhere, and every moment is a holy moment
known, lived, and released, so you set down the task
of sifting through and singling out and only breathe
into them, and you kneel, whispering, “grateful,
only let me be grateful, now and now and now…”

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