The book was on my coffeetable because I was using it to hold up my iPad so I could watch a CreativeLive video. The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. I hadn’t flipped through it in years, this book that was given to me by someone at the press, because that’s what happens when you know people in the book trade, you get books. (And it’s awesome.)

I flipped through the table of contents and the whole giant tome looking for something to grab me for just a minute. Something to tussle me awake from wondering about the future. And how human it is. So human that we don’t admit it for fear of seeming normal, not the unique snowflake-like butterflies that we all think we just might be… when in reality it is internalizing and digesting this fact that gives us depth and space to grow.

And for a second I fell in love with a Hettie Jones poem, the more beautiful than beautiful poem, Words:

Words

are keys
or stanchions
or stones

I give you my word
You pocket it
and keep the change

Here is a word on
the tip of my tongue: love

I hold it close
though it dreams of leaving.

I sat with it and remembered how when I was at college, in a 2-year program run by hippies in a dorm basement and we had classes like “Jack Kerouac and the Beats,” instead of “English Literature 101,” I wanted to be a poet. When I thought that running away from life, in its varying incarnations, was actually living life. When being like Hunter S. Thompson seemed cool instead of hollow and empty. When I took the wrong lessons from the Beats instead of heeding the right one, which was to fall a little in love each day.

And I flipped some more and came across There is a River by S.A. Griffin:

There is a cheerful ignorance
a chance meeting and
luck like gold that cannot be
mined or
stolen

a common atom

a dance

and stars that trick the
water with their
certain
magic

do not wash your wars in it
take your holy rituals to the
precious fountains built by your
agencies of fear

press your
wine from the fallout
and drink your
bitter victory

for yes

there is a river
a giving river that will
sing you safely

a river of
light

final
fast
and free

where you can
disrobe
and leave your casual sadness
walking sideways at the
shore

meet me there
whoever you are
and we will agree to
swim it
together

And along with the photo above in Instagram I wrote, “Oh, nothing, just falling a little in love with this poem (this is just the scrumptious beginning) by S.A. Griffin, revisiting my deep dark roots, when I was convinced I would be a poet and drink wine from the bottle at readings like the Beats and go on road trips where we would always stop to look at the stars every night, just because we could and they were beautiful. Re-remembering what it feels like to fall a little in love with something new every day. Recalling that tingle in my toes and half smile on my face, which feels both delicious and delightful(l). Have you fallen a little in love yet today? ❤️

And then realized that falling a little bit in love with something each day is my future. Taking the time to sit and feel how gorgeous it feels to have your breath be taken from you when you have a moment or a conversation or a feeling that seems almost too exquisite to exist. And that is my job, my purpose, my everything. And yours, too.

Maybe it’s a button you find on the ground, or the way someone you love exhales, or the effortless flight of a tiny bird from tree to tree. It’s to stop and notice that this, this is living. Noticing. Feeling. Digesting. So, I hope that you fall a little bit in love today and have the presence to notice that you’re falling. That this moment, this thing is happening. And that you continue to feel this and “hold it close” like Hettie says, “though it dreams of leaving.”

That you have moments that “cannot be mined or stolen” because they are yours alone to take and transform into new and better and braver moments. Because “there is a river / a giving river that will” show up if you just remember to let it.