and now

In preparation for a school year's close, I vow to stop, notice and appreciate my surroundings. As I perused the internet this morning in a haze of procrastination, I came across my favorite high school poem (that was 10 years ago...eek!), O Taste and See by Denise Levertov:

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see

the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

And then, if nostalgic prose was not enough, I came across the story of a painter ignored on a street corner in Paris in Style and the City. We get so many small signals every day that scream "slow down!" The wisest words I've gotten this year came from my undergraduate advisor, "and life is, we must trust, longer than we experience it at any given moment and filled with unexpected possibilities."
And so, for someone who measures her years according to the academic calendar, this one is coming to completion. But I will take time to listen to the music, despite the rush.