There Are No Words

(from Brainstorms)

For some things there are no words.

The feeling of hearts connected across time and space,
Of knowing what someone is thinking
Even without them saying it,
Of picking up the phone to send a message
To find that love is writing at the same time.

When I think about love
In all its forms,
I wish I could describe the rush of energy I felt
When I stood underneath the path
Of hundreds of birds as they migrated up the canyon,
The feeling of wanting to go back in for my camera
And knowing that if I turned my back for a moment
They would be gone.

When I think about loss and pain and heartache and fear
And tears
And tears
And tears I can’t explain,
There are no words.

To love is to embrace the risk.
To love is to embrace the risk that one day I will lose love.

One day I will lose love.
There is no question of that.
Children grow.
Loved ones go.
People change.

I am changing every day. And tomorrow
I will look at love through a different lens.

But today I can let myself stand in awe,
Let my body become overwhelmed with the feeling
Contained within this magnificent impermanence

Of love
For which
There are no words.

The video below combines my reading of a poem with photographs I’ve taken in moments that moved me to awe–the curve of the earth as seen from an airplane, the ease of a bird gliding across a clear blue sky, the majesty of a cave both carved by water’s flow and nourished by it, the playfulness of my child dancing on the beach at sunset, and the impossibility of a rainbow captured by my phone’s camera.