Photo by Daniel Adesina 

 

To hold the day before me
like a rare treasure,
the hours smooth pearls
strung by hand
on a thick thread of longing.
To recognize my heart
connection to the whole
and remember my time here
is but a blip
on the edge of infinity.
To honor the miracle of breath,
organ, muscle, and bone.
Today, I open my child’s eyes
to wonder—how the doe
and the fawn trust me
as they nap on the grass,
how the whirring hummingbird
glistens green then ruby
in the fading sun.

(previously published in ONE ART, 2024)

By Carolyn Chilton Casas

Carolyn Chilton Casas has lived on the Central Coast for 56 years, the perfect landscape for a love of hiking and playing beach volleyball. Her poetry has appeared in Amethyst Review, Energy Magazine, and One Earth Sangha among other places, and in anthologies including "The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal," "Thin Spaces & Sacred Spaces," and "Women in a Golden State." She is a practicing Reiki Master and teacher who explores ways of healing in articles she writes for wellness magazines in several countries. More of her work can be found on Instagram and Facebook, at www.carolynchiltoncasas.com, and in her newest collection of poetry, “Under the Same Sky.”