Kaleidoscope Poem

Kaleidoscope

Light, bits of glass, physics,
Whimsy, imagination, delight,
Sudden change,
New perspective,
Temporary art,
Portable stained glass,
Time suspended.

At just after 9 a.m. this morning, someone on the East Coast searched for a kaleidoscope poem. I know this because it was a google search that landed them on my blog on a page with a poem in progress of images and sensations from sitting on my grandmother's front porch one early morning last summer as she made the slow transition from this life.

In gratitude for being sent back to that sacred moment -- captured clumsily, I thought I'd try to write a kaleidoscope poem.

(This discovery also prompted me to look at recent blog traffic to a blog that hasn't been updated for months, and, to my delight, I discovered that Whispering Hope, still regularly brings searchers here. There's something poetic in that alone.)

I've written under the words "kc's kaleidoscope" since high school and I've collected kaleidoscopes at least that long. Not captured in the poem above is my delight in how a kaleidoscope brings so many possibilities and perspectives together in one place as art, not conflict. They are held not in tension, but in beauty.

And, as I was crafting the poem, I knew just which picture needed to go with these words! And it made me realize, anew, just how much I will miss the kaleidoscope of light and experience that has made art of my life all the years I have been at First UMC San Diego.