Sometimes, when you least expect it, good things happen.

I had been blue all weekend. There really wasn't any reason for it; I just didn't feel very enthusiastic about anything, and I had just a vague feeling of sadness all the time. To be honest, I just sort of moped around the house, feeling neglected, though I didn't even try calling any of my friends, who could have snapped me out of feeling sorry for myself pretty quickly. Maybe that's why I didn't call; who knows?

At any rate, I was forced out of my bad mood, whether I liked it or not. I was woke up by a call from my finace. Now, it is hard for me to ever be mad at him, whether I'm sleepy or not. And of all the ways that a person can be awakened, one of the nicest is the sound of your loved ones voice. With him 2,000 miles away, an early morning phone call is a rare thing indeed.

Then my dad and I went to the grocery store togther, came home, and cooked dinner together. I hadn't had an afternoon like that with him in a long time. It was just like when I was a little girl again, with him teaching me how to cook, although I don't think he realized that I had prepared the meal we had tonight several times, without his being there. It doesn't matter; the fact that we were able to spend some time together, just me and him, laughing and talking, is what really matters. And he feels proud of himself for "teaching" me something. And he has taught me -- that being with someone, spending time with them, is the best gift you can give to someone you care about. It is a lesson he's been teaching me through example for as long as I can remember.

But it doesn't end there. Nope, this wonderful day of mine gets even better. The mail came. I got a postcard in the mail from my friend in England. I haven't heard from her in a month. She's doing great, and packed as much information about the joys of her trip as can be fitted on to a standard sized postcard. And a note from my future sister-in-law, welcoming me to the family, and telling me how much she is looking forward to the wedding.

Then I checked my e-mail. And I had two e-cards waiting for me, as well as an e-mail from my fiance. The cards were wonderful; a beautiful one congradulating me on my engagement, and the other one of the nicest things anyone has said about my writing in a long time. Both from the same sweet angel who knows good and well who she is.

So what is the point of all this? You never know when your words can change someone's day, even their whole life. Call up an old friend, or drop in on a loved one you haven't seen in a while. Send that card, today, not tomorrow. I have been inspired by all this to catch up on my own correspondence, and I was amazed at the number of letters that I had piled up. I thought that I had just written everyone, not that long ago, and instead I see here all those people who I "owe" letters to. But it isn't a burdensome debt. Its more like a circle. Today, those friends who surround me pulled me out of a pity party they didn't even know I was having. Tomorrow, you could do the same for someone else.

All we have to do is take the time.

"The poet refuses to let things merge, lie low, succumb to visual habit . . . she hoists things out of their routine and lays them out on a papery beach, to be fumbled and explored . . ."
-- Diane Ackerman

I was driving home yesterday through a maze of construction. The roads around my house are completely torn up, the orange cones directing traffic in every direction but the one the driver wishes to go in. As I was making my way through all this, at about half the speed usually allowed, it came to me that I could turn bits and pieces of this into a poem. Fragments started to come to me, the way I write all my poems.

I held these pieces loosely in my mind until I got home. But when the pen and paper was in front of me, I shook off the inspiration as being too dull and ordinary, too much like every day life and not enough like poetry. I thought it would be silly to write about construction. Orange barrels are not poetic enough, I thought to myself.

The poem is gone now, and will not likely come back to me again. I happened to look at my calendar sometime later in the day, and found the words above, and realized that I had let a perfectly good poem slip through my fingers because it did not conform to what I thought a poem should be. If nothing else, I should have written it down, and not tried to force it to be anything other than what it was.

I suppose every writer has had these moments, were something gleamed brightly for a few minutes, but because they did not stop to pick it up, it was lost to them forever.

Somehow, there is no poem as beautiful as the one that got away.