Dear Li-Young Lee

Dear Li-Young Lee,

There’s a feeling in your poem

“From Blossoms”

that I had been looking for but could never,

in so many words,

articulate.

It is that unmistakable feeling of eternity

that sometimes washes over me,

embedded in the simplest of moments,

a fleeting feeling

made from the fabric of forever.

Your moment

was of peach blossoms.

And from your blossoms came

my raindrops in the afternoon,

inviting me down a bend in the road.

It wasn’t raining, or misting,

but spraying outside,

an incessant barrage of droplets, not falling

but simply emerging

from an impenetrably gray sky.

I began running on the slick gray asphalt,

covered by a leafy green canopy of trees.

The moment smelled like October, though it was only September.

Perhaps it was the intermittent breeze,

the odd serenity of the empty trail.

Hard hills came and my breaths deepened.

The summit surfaced and I began my descent, step by step.

From hill to hill.

Raindrop to raindrop.

Inhale to exhale.

I felt my salty sweat mix

with the cool aura

of the water around me,

bred from the clouds

and untarnished by the earth.

My whole being was inextricably tied to the trees,

pulling me forward.

I was breathing not only air,

but leaves and branches

and the solid sound of my footsteps.

This was the winding jubilance of run.

Four miles done,

I stepped out on the grass,

lusciously green,

buoyed by the soft earth below and awash

with the leaves of a summer gone by.

My feet were roots,

covered in dew and grass

and leaves and blue veins.

I looked out on the empty hills,

and for an instant

I grasped the infinite.

I felt the ethereal raindrop.

I stood still.

You were right

when you said

There are days

in which we live as if time

has disappeared from the background—

from inhale to exhale to inhale,

from footstep to footstep,

from raindrop to raindrop to

incredible raindrop,

to sweet incredible raindrop.