The Sweet Spot in the Chaos

revised and unpaywalled

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Spokane, Washington — Photo by Jonathan Potter ⓒ 2024

Over the Selkirks, the sun
squeezes color as if out
of a tube of paint and smears
it across the clouded canvas
of the eastern sky. My longing
joins it in breathing harmony —

and the feeling that the earth
is above the sky, the sky
below the earth overcomes
me in the moment of pausing
between breaths, the feeling that I
am the sweet spot in the chaos

where the breathing rhythm of
the universe is revealed
to be a dance we've all joined
where no misstep is possible
in the end because every step
is after all part of the dance.

Call it a waltz if you wish
or call it a school of fish
or a murmuration of
light and cloud and mountain and tree
where we lose ourselves in love and
forget what we were frightened of.

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French translation: