when something wonderful has touched us

i want to understand what magic is.
i want to understand what it is that hits us and pulls at us and opens our hearts and "makes our minds and hearts beat more in sync" (a little quote from a long-ago e-mail from narwhal).
i want to understand how we can capture it and breathe it into our bodies and let it flow through our veins, trapped in little molecules of oxygen until it enters our cells and infuses our membranes and becomes us.
i want to know how we can wake up every day and be giddy for no reason, simply because of a once-upon-a-time when we held our breaths to stop time.


I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us

as with a match
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,

but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.

The geese
flew on.
I have never
seen them again.

Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.


from Snow Geese by Mary Oliver