the places that swell our hearts:
the swooping of an owl’s wings deep in the forest,
a bed of damp moss and pale tinted ferns  
unfolding their holy script,  
the mercy of sunlight stippling through the trees,  
branches that hold so much  
shaped like wishbones  
licking the sky,  
rivers that bend  
singing a song of clay  
brimming with secrets,  
the ancient pool of water deep down in the current  
writing down the poems in the middle of the night,
the aching tenderness of  
leaning my whole body into  
her voice,  
soft vowels flowing  
in the key of tenderness,  
kin to sea rhythms and leaf music.

No one knows what will happen next.
There’s an urgency inside us  
to think of a way forward,  
a way of listening back  
into the redolent darkness,  
the mouth of a great sorrow,  
believing that  
to crack open  
this broken world,
a brittle bread,  
is a kind of prayer.

Push back the gloom.
We are connected  
in the thick womb of time.  
Look at each other until we see   
the sources of light that come through us.  
Let it honey your mouth  
like the drone of delirious bees.  
Recite from the book of trembling,  
the keen knife blade flash of revelation,  
where the heavy lifting happens.

The world is beautiful,
humming us anew each day
from cradle to coffin,   
with great tender radiance
speaking our names  
into the book of intentions
and the delicate petals of our ears—
portable light to be drunk by us.  

There are kinds of joy that can save us.
Oh, let me take it in,  
the promise of connection,  
coming undone with astonishment, with reverence—  
a bell waiting for its chime.    

~  Cento poem, including the title, from lines/ phrases of essays in Robert Vivian’s All I Feel Is Rivers and William Woolfitt’s Eyes Moving Through the Dark