Kill you with delight

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

~ Mary Oliver ~


Tell me, today, what captured you so stunningly it took your breath?  What made you pause long enough to forget yourself and be lost in wonder?  What reached deep inside your gut and tugged at you and said "pay attention to me because you were made for this.'?  Whose prayers did you overhear and to them add your own?  What colours painted and washed your day?

For me
it was the quivering
that looked like a frigid breeze
on bare skin
but was really
knowing myself so intoxicatingly
it was unbearable
and the excess leaked out
in shivers

It was the small blushes
of bluesky
on a skin of cloud
the kind of tell
that gives it away
to anyone paying attention
that you have been touched.