Pause

I'm sure most of us have encountered the scenario when you are walking towards a cross walk and are then met with a moment of indecision when the hand starts flashing, but you're still 20 yards away from the street. Usually, my time is so short and things are planned so tightly that I put on my speed walking legs and barely make it as the light for oncoming traffic turns green.

Today I

took

a

breath

and waited.

It was a pleasant wait. I appreciated the stingy cold that brushed past my face that contrasted my warm body buried under layers of clothes; like I was a deep radiating core of magma surrounded by protective layers. Mmmm. Cozy.

Soon enough the light turned and I began my silent walk home. I paused by a tree that I pass multiple times every day on my way to and from campus. I gazed up at its canopy of branches and let my eyes feast on the multicolored bark. It testified to me that God truly is the Master Artist.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
[ee cummings]