there is nothing like

becoming dizzy with blue sky and rustling leaves and swaying trucks as I stand among birch trees, staring straight up

lying in bed at night, listening to the eerie call of loons, back and forth, across the lake

a daytime moon holding watch over a field of newly-plowed hay

Stella’s excitement prior to her first fireworks

the lake at sunset, when the trees on the other side become golden and the rocks underwater bright, and there is no sound except paddles dipping into water

the voice of Vusi Mahlasela

a doe and two fawns stopped ahead of me on my run, their ears and tails twitching as they watch me, before bounding into the forest

a monarch caterpillar making slow work of a wide leaf of milkweed

watching my daughter play in the same sand and swim in the same water in which I played as a child

reading a novel in the daytime