It’s a shiver that climbs the trellis of the spine, each tingle a bright white morning glory breaking into blossom beneath the skin. It can happen anywhere, anytime, even finding this sleeve of ice worn by a branch all morning, now fallen on a bed of snow. You can choose to pause, pick it up, hold the cold thing in your hand or not. Few tell us that wonder and awe are decisions we make daily, hourly, minute by minute in the tiny offices of the heart—tilting the head to look up at every tree turned into a chandelier by light striking ice in just the right way.
James Crews is the author of the essay collection, Kindness Will Save the World, and editor of several bestselling poetry anthologies: Healing the Divide, The Path to Kindness, How to Love the World, and The Wonder of Small Things. He has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, People Magazine, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. He is the author of four prize-winning books of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment, and his poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, The New Republic, and Prairie Schooner. James lives with his husband on forty rocky acres in the woods of Southern Vermont. For more information, visit: jamescrews.net.
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