Burgos

i.  refuge 

I take refuge from the rain in a 

cozy café

a small girl dawdles behind her parents 

            holding on to a stick 

            and wearing a soft pink cap 

she follows along, 

blissfully innocent, 

eyes on the ground a few feet ahead of her

 

what does the world look like from three feet up?

 

ii. why don’t you get going?

there’s a beauty in how I am living life these days, but there’s also an urgency I want to distance myself from. I am like ambition from Mary Oliver’s Black Oaks who asks, as she “nervously shifts her weight from one boot to another–‘why don’t you get going?’” I am always feeling to need to rush along with my life, but Oliver implores me to cherish the slow moments: “For there I am in the mossy shadows, under the trees// and to tell the truth, I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness. I don’t want to sell my life for money. I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.” 

 

iii.  frolic

I’ve stopped on a bridge, the river rushes below me and the sun pops out from behind a cloud. As I lean upon the railing, apple core in one hand and pen in the other, a mallard duck waddles by and the water washes over a wooden chair, The town reawakens as the storm subsides; the warm light invites all to frolic once more.