Stopping to See

This past weekend, I looked from Wiseman’s View into Linville Gorge.  I was high enough that I could see the cloud’s shadows coloring the tops of some trees, leaving others bright against the open sun.  It was God’s collection of green—and my standing stupor that even clouds have shadows.  Chinua Achebe said “If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place.”  There was the river and the divide in the trees where cars must’ve been braking down hills, their passengers turning down the music, stopping to see.  I could follow the path with my finger up whole mountains. 

This morning, a stack of paper has spread itself across the kitchen table—poems I’ve written over the last nine months in need of revision, while dogs beckon back doors to be opened, bowls to be refilled.  All those commas.  I pick up a poem and suddenly remember writing it—the weather, the soft bed where I sat.  How often are we in a position to make our pasts more beautiful? 

Danny brings me a salad.  Danny is my lovely man whose eyes shine when talking about the perfection of eggs, the necessity of oranges in the morning.  We push papers over for lunch and look out the windows, into the bowl where walnuts, red peppers, bean sprouts glisten in vinegar and oil, cinnamon and mustard.  So much goes into beauty: the collision of tectonic plates, the grief of not knowing the future, the bleeding finger under running water.  

Some of Danny's handiwork.  




xoxo Corrie Lynn