An Indomitable Grace

When I was younger I sometimes thought
that life was always beautiful
with fields of foxtails fanning in summer’s heat,
and cold stream water feeding hidden patches of violets.
I thought that snowfall and twilight sledding were nothing
if not profound magic
or that I could live off of mulberries
and biscuits I took from the kitchen
like a romanticized runaway.

Sometimes still, I am enamored on petrichor and wind-rippled water.
Sometimes still, merely possible worlds are real,
death does not conquer all, and la vie est belle comme elle a l’air.