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
xoxo Corrie Lynn
