Moments of Being – a poem by Glenn Wright

Moments of Being

That’s what Virginia Woolf called them,
those evaporating flashes of insight
that give us
for a few brief seconds
a conviction of our own significance
in a larger, well-planned scheme.

Such fits of faith are not life-changing.
They do not merit an augmented chord
in the soundtrack of our lives.
They might happen while we are cutting carrots
or brushing our teeth
or waiting in line at the post office.

We might have three or four in a lifetime,
but at those times
we know with saintlike certainty
that an unknowable artist has placed us
as a spot of color
on a pointillist canvas
that can only be understood
from a million light years away.

Glenn Wright is a retired teacher living in Anchorage, Alaska with his wife, Dorothy, and their dog, Bethany.  He writes poetry in order to challenge what angers him, to ponder what puzzles him, and to celebrate what delights him.