Keep Reaching - By James Crews

The trick is to keep reaching

for the light you will never touch,

and to be nourished by the stretch

toward impossible things.

The trick is to bloom where you are,

not calling it a failure because

you wanted a different outcome.

Live each day devoted to awe,

so that when a monarch lands

on the tip of a coneflower, seeming

to swell with that sudden infusion

of sweetness, you don’t miss it.

So that, while you watch, a pair

of hard-won wings seems to open

and close and open again in you.