We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves…
— Ada Limón, from “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa”

We catalog the great loves,
tucking them into the heartspace,
hoping they never disappear,
even when those we love have.

We sigh over the long-ago romance,
the ones who got away—or didn’t
and maybe should have—the adored
elder, the long-gone best friend,

the beloved pets. But we seldom
think to record the ordinary loves—
the favorite ice cream, the moment
in spring when bare trees leaf out

in exuberance, the discovery of
a bug whose name we do not know
perched on the crimson geranium,
the satisfaction as we sip our tea

with a dear one. The thousand bits
of everydayness that swing by us
every day, ones we don’t record
in words or images, because we

can’t archive them all. Can we?
Brief snippets of love, tiny in
magnitude when they occur, but
later they morph into marvelous.

Like the light streaming through
the dirty window of this room,
just now, on us, right here, together.
Let us tuck this smidgen of love

into our catalog of the ordinary,
which, someday, when we open
this compendium of astonishment,
will leap out at us as nothing

short of extraordinary.