An Ode to Crooked Lines

Something in me stirs
when I see sidewalk cracks – 
those crooked lines
dividing surfaces so smooth
in twos or threes or fours
like faded stained glass underfoot – 
the clefts all sprouting up with grass
and bending weeds
and crinkling leaves
and things that will not last

and in ephemerality
of unimportant things I feel
a sudden overpowering of life,
of strange felicity – 
of even here and now the hope
of unexpected littleness
of being this alive
of feeling love I strive
but cannot ever quite express
in fullness
(no, not yet)

The love I want to give 
could never be contained
by straightened lines.
But what I can
and what I hope to give 
are different things.

And yet the hope itself is gift

A tattered leaf
is beautiful
not for having once been whole
but for itself – unlike, unseen
As fragment, other pieces filter in
to fill the gaps

Emptiness does not exist
perhaps,
but is perspective only

There is no nothing
For smallness is a something too
A little chink of light beneath a door
is light
no matter how it’s qualified

They lied
who said that some things are too small
to count, that counting is their purpose when
it is enough to be

You cannot be too small to see,
be seen,
to lift your voice, 
to lean 
towards the truth of who you are,
to make a little choice
for joy,

and then to be –
in that small moment – 
truly free