What Speaks

 2/22/2026 (c)

“What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary: the front-page splash, the banner headlines.” Stephen Harrod Buhner

 

I aim to look at the small. The ordinary.

The moments I interact with a bird on the sidewalk—

 

hello Robin,

hello Crow,

 

a chickadee that would fit in one hand—

if it would trust me, and better that it doesn’t—

 

or to watch my cat eat, a beast tamed

with bowls and catnip;

who stalks me room to room

and sleeps on my keyboard

while I try to type—

 

the sudden surprise of scent

passing by an Aphrodite Sweet shrub,

or Lilac, Honeysuckle—

 

hello Perfume

 

I choose to walk by them on my way to work

rather than the more efficient concrete

sidewalk a block over—

 

Moments I don’t tell anyone about.

They are not big enough—

 

I miss and see less often slugs and worms

that rise and writhe across the sidewalk—

I read that they are trying to escape drowning,

but stranded, they starve.

 

Perhaps my longing to see them is misplaced,

how rare to see the underworld

expose itself to the sun—

 

I always feel like I can smell them—

it’s petrichor—

rain on dry soil, geosmin spores, earthy aerosols—

 

I want to carry all these intimacies,

like suggestions, like small moments within dreams

blurring into the day. I want to wear them

like a film over my skin—

 

Last month I saw the crocus in a neighbor’s yard.

Frequently they arrive in late February,

just before the final frost. But this was January,

And somehow I felt grateful for their hope.