one night in Oxford
Living, we cover vast territories;
imagine your life drawn on a map —
a scribble on the town where you grew up,
each bus trip traced between school
and home, or a clean line across the sea
to a place you flew once. Think of the time
and things we accumulate, all the while growing
more conscious of losing and leaving. Aging,
our bodies collect wrinkles and scars
for each place the world would not give
under our weight. Our thoughts get laced
with strange aches, sweet as the final chord
that hangs in a guitar’s blond torso.
– Julia Kasdorf, “First Gestures”
Oxford embraces us with a freezing wind while we spin around the streetlit city after dark, half-delirious, hunting down food and warmth. We are tired and hungry and travel-weary.
Still so young, so new to the world, we are losing wonder. Imagination still remains with us, certainly, but wonder is the pulse of the soul, the current of our energy, the conduit between human and divine imagination. To imagine, and thereby in some fashion to create, is to imitate the divine. Wonder is listening for the…
