So many times something happens seemingly by accident – you apply for one job, but they hire you for something else way better. You go down the wrong street, and suddenly there’s a view you’ve never seen before, and somehow you’re uplifted and refreshed. Out of the blue, someone tells you, “You remember when you did/said that thing? That really helped me.” Or you overhear something in a stranger’s conversation and it relieves a burden you’ve been carrying for years. We don’t know in what ways our meanderings are creating beauty and welcoming others to love.
People Like UsThere are more like us. All over the worldThere are confused people, who can’t rememberThe name of their dog when they wake up, and peopleWho love God but can’t remember whereHe was when they went to sleep. It’s All right. The world cleanses itself this way.A wrong number occurs to you in the middleOf the night, you dial it, it rings just in timeTo save the house. And the second-story manGets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,And he’s lonely , and they talk, and the thiefGoes back to college. Even in graduate school,You can wander into the wrong classroom,And hear great poems lovingly spokenBy the wrong professor. And you find your soulAnd greatness has a defender, and even in death you’re safe.
– Robert Bly –
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Interval
Sometimes, out of nowhere, it comes back,
that night when, driving home from the city,
having left the nearest streetlight miles behind us,
we lost our way on the back country roads
and found, when we slowed down to read a road sign,
a field alive with the blinking of fireflies,
and we got out and stood there in the darkness,
amazed at their numbers, their scattered sparks
igniting silently in a randomness
that somehow added up to a marvel
both earthly and celestial, the sky
brought down to earth, and brought to life,
a sublunar starscape whose shifting constellations
were a small gift of unexpected astonishment,
luminous signalings leading us away
from thoughts of where we were going
or coming from, the cares that often drive us
relentlessly onward and blind us
to such flickering intervals when moments
are released from their rigid sequence
and burn like airborne embers, floating free.
– Jeffrey Harrison –
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Photography: “Fireflies,” by Donna Van Bogaert
