Brief moments I remember, when time seemed still. ✗Two bucks dash into a church cemetery at sunset ✗Deer rush off into the dark as the mist rolls in at the park on a cold night ✗Hazy feelings after waking from an intense dream, uncertain of everything ✗Reading through books older than my grandparents, turning the pages of delicate paper gently ✗Waking too early, at sunrise, before the daily noise ✗Aiming an arrow, release, nocking another, repeat until quiver is empty ✗Playing an instrument, eyes closed ✗Moonstone and muscovite sparkling under the water at the lake's edge ✗A murder of crows descends down on moving day when everything seems hopeless ✗Cleaning a muscovite-quartz schist and finding tiny garnet stones embedded in ✗Carved pumpkins, flowers, and grapes left by someone in a side path in the field ✗When the moon is too big in the sky, looming far too close ✗Antisolar rays taking up the sky at sunset ✗Rainbows in the sky, rainbows in water ✗Barred owls laughing out of sight at night in the woods ✗Headphones in, nature sounds mixed with clanking keys, deep concentration ✗Cicadas, frogs, and crickets singing on summer nights ✗Watching the sunset on a dock, the water moving inches beneath me ✗Fireworks on the beach, barefoot, writing in the sand ✗Long nights in summer as a child, staying up too late writing about nothing in a big, black journal while the world was silent ✗A peacock calling out at dawn every morning, one year ✗Early morning years ago, before opening, sitting with the snow leopard ✗Playing in arcades, drifting somewhere far away ✗Underwater, hands holding, light blue, floating ✗Man on the side of the road points out two bucks at the edge of the woods to his dog ✗The corpse flower at the university blooming ✗At the museum, at another university, seeing the Egyptian mummies; wondering why we were all paying to see a dead child's body and dead pets in glass cases; the boy is labeled a priest, his age at twelve a secondary detail; his body far from his emptied grave ✗Dr. King's grave, surrounded by shimmering water ✗Mimosa pudica, touch-me-not, found along the trail years ago, closing in at the slightest touch ✗Jewelweed, the other touch-me-not, exploding at the watery bed by one of the university's churches from a single tap ✗Talking in the car on a gray, rainy day, at the park where the kudzu used to be ✗Walking through the neighborhood at 5AM, before sunrise with only the streetlights, right before getting fast food for breakfast ✗Returning from the forest, seeing a big, old buck staring at us from across the creek ✗Talking on the front porch after a light, humid rain; heavy mist rolling in across the street; a fawn rushes down the road ✗Sitting behind the local community college, a fawn comes up to us, then dashes away ✗Early evening in the field, empty of people, full of life ✗On the trail years ago, six foot kingsnake rests in a young tree, unnoticed by most ✗Rabbits out in yards on midnight walks ✗Going down the road late at night; a small person sits in the middle of the road; the head turns all the way around; the owl flies off ✗Holding out my hand to a butterfly and it landing on my finger ✗The beach at sunrise, the dolphins playing in the waves ✗The hour after viewing Picnic at Hanging Rock for the first time