EMILY WEBB. [Having “gone back” to live a childhood birthday after her death] Mama, I’m here! I’m grown up! I love you all, everything! (Leans over table as if wanting to embrace it) (Mrs. Webb faces up, pares potatoes.) I can’t look at everything hard enough… It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.
— Thornton Wilder, Our Town, Act III
Our contingency is a gift. We are wonderfully, blessedly limited. How can we see better, wake up and approach our days better? I don’t have answers, but am happy to continue asking the questions.
I promised you all a poem last time I wrote. Here it is now. I dearly hope you enjoy it, and that you’re put in mind of ways you can soak up your own life, to learn more every day, as Emily (Webb) Gibbs says in Our Town, to “realize life while [you] live it—every, every minute.”
A Spell for Seeing in the Dark
I set my hands as if my shuddering (unshuttering) would soak you up, all of you into me. The spell jerks past my lips to remind the world to still— “I love you all, everything.” Rake and rattle my bones, sweet earth, and crush lest my Babylon spill another stammer of me; and fire me slow in the way of trees and toddlers to know— which is to say to see like the sleeping child does beneath my shaking hands.
To you, dear reader. What corner of your life needs a reminder to still? I’d love to hear of anything this might stir in you.
Awaking Dragons is a free newsletter. If you appreciated this post, the best way you can tell the author their work is valuable is by liking, commenting, or sharing it with others who might enjoy it. Maybe even all three.
Thanks so much for reading! You honor me with your time.