Tourist

WORDS LIKE LIGHT

Friday,  January 21, 2022

            I sometimes see myself as an eternal tourist, a sightseer on a constant and marvelous holiday. After all, the world that I, and all of us, live in is a breathtakingly beautiful ‘country’ full of amazingly lovely skies and streets and evenings and people and polar bears and bright dust on desks. Even in our darkest hours and dreariest places, there’s beauty to behold – just in the way faces, even furious and sorrowful ones, always seem sincere, and in the way water softly settles in the lowest place in the sink,  and in the way wind always has no trouble traveling where it wishes. I am a lucky traveler, all day and every day. I can stop and visit this special moment and that one. I can explore the look of sunlight on cups at the breakfast table, the graceful way a washcloth drapes over a faucet, the ceaseless flow of the river of feelings and thoughts inside me. I am a daily explorer who gets lucky views of smiles on faces at the grocery store, who hears the graceful and special sounds of footsteps on the carpet in his house, and who witnesses, over and over, the wonder of a new moment making its appearance. Each day, whether a sad one or a blissful one, is an astonishing spectacle, and I am a respectful and appreciative sightseer. 

A poem from a few years ago …