What puts a smile on my face,
causes my heart to leap,
are encounters with the wild.

Whether face to face with a mountain lion
or pressing my nose to a tuberose flower,
a warmth spreads through me
like liquid honey,
waking every circuit,
bringing my best self fully online.

Encounters with human beings can be joyful, too—
especially when that person meets me
heart to heart,
light shining through their eyes,
as if the moment is far richer
than a simple greeting.

It asks something of us:
that we drop the armor,
allow the vulnerability of babies,
of small children awake to the world—
looking out while simultaneously looking in.

That spark of recognition,
of re-membering parts of ourselves
we have defended against
rather than softened into.

The world we have created together—
the collective field we live inside—
can feel fraught with unresolved trauma
because it is.

For centuries, we assumed dominion
over environments too vast, too complex,
to fully understand.
We stiffened.
Resisted interactions that might have healed us.
Fear was sent to the back room of the house,
a place no one entered,
no one dared explore.

We shrank the world into something manageable,
something we could function inside,
rather than honoring it
as a living, breathing organism—
like ourselves, only larger.

We forgot her gifts
in the rush to defend our ground.
We spread outward until no frontier remained.

Perhaps the last frontier
is to loosen the self-imposed strictures,
cut the ties that bind us
to repeating old ways and habits,
and welcome what we have long denied.

Perhaps then
we might discover blessings
everywhere we look.

Meeting of the elementals ~ photo by Chris Johnson 2025