Her Own Bright Mirror

Early this morning, ‛neath hazy starshine, in a temperature of thirty-seven degrees, through fresh, clean air, I ran for the twenty-second consecutive day, as always with my feet bare in the flat, thin sandals I’ve long since come to rely on, live in, and love. In the vegetable section of the little organic grocery store we visit every Sunday morning, a woman perhaps in her late-seventies looked at my bare feet and said I was a brave soul. I told her I’d somehow become used to it, to which she replied that even with thick socks and shoes, her feet were still cold. But I could see that she herself wasn’t cold, that she was in fact alive and glad to be there, and even a little astonished, in a positively warm, human way, to be anywhere at all. In other words, the little boy in me could see the little girl in her, which is still another way of saying that Life was looking at herself and smiling by the light of her own bright mirror.

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