How Do Miracles Happen?

Still life by Vera Belikh, my friend in St. Petersburg, Russia

***

Full Bloom 25 January 15, 2017

I’m learning on my own body and 
soul how miracles happen. I can
only do so much and give it my best,
but others keep rushing in to help.
If that’s not God, I don’t know what is.  – Full Bloom 12

Why do partitas soothe in spite of
their sadness? Bach conveys hope
when despair feels normal; order
when loss threatens, beauty after
the hurricane has whipped and torn
all the leaves. –Full Bloom 14

It is perhaps the best
gift we earth-dwellers can give each other
while we live, suffer, and win our way
past terror, doubt, feelings of inadequacy.
Such transformations are sufficiently common
to be recognized but rare enough to feel like
miracles.  As I lose some, if not all, of my
powers, these moments come more often,
and their wings lift me past my fear. – Full Bloom 15

I notice changes. I’m not the same, yet 
the deep I am is still there. The panic 
that corroded my confidence is in
abeyance. I forget, but memories return. 
My mind lulls me to sleep when I want 
to be bolt awake. I reach out to old friends, 
and they are glad. Why did I wait so long? 
My mind imitates the weather, playing 
one trick after another, yet I live, I enjoy 
people, I write and learn new tricks. 
They see an old woman, still lively.
I always did escape harm, crawl through 
hedges that kept everyone else out. 
So many people love me: what have they 
seen? Or did they simply feel seen, known,
valued? Is that my secret, and as I age,
it saves me? I live well, and people 
help me because I see? Am I like 
a Bach partita? Maybe so.