… If you were to collect the found art of your everyday life and honored it—
the repetition, the patterns, the strangeness, the heartbreaking familiarity—
well, then I think you would see that your ordinary life is actually
quite extraordinary.

—Jamie Cat Callan

•••

The way you rummage through the sock drawer
to find the just-right pair of identical charcoal gray ones.

How your tea choices change, predictably, with not
only the seasons, but the temperature.

How you swept the kitchen floor before the front porch,
then the back landing just outside the door, every day.

How, upon awakening, you listen for the bird that sang
at dawn in the back yard, though it has been gone for years,

How you always knew, when the phone rang,
that it was him. And he never believed that you did.

How all the dead loved ones visited your dreams,
and sometimes, you remembered that they had.

What if your ordinary life was truly extraordinary,
though you never realized it?

What if you got all the way to the end, and on a last breath
you heard that single bird, calling you home?