“You can observe a lot
just by watching,”
said a baseball player
who understood seasons.
Two afternoons ago,
I sat in a lecture hall
watching a man
who still loves what he does.
This, I think, is a form of generosity.
He spoke about observation
as though it were not a skill
but a posture,
something you lean into
rather than master.
Take the dandelion.
We learned its name early.
We learned it could grant wishes
if we breathed hard enough.
We learned the wind would do the rest.
Then we decided
we knew it.
Label applied.
Lesson complete.
Attention withdrawn.
The dandelion continued anyway
with its architecture,
its patience,
its quiet mathematics of return.
It kept unfolding relationships
with bees,
with soil,
with children who forgot its name
but still loved its defiance.
How many things
have we learned only enough
to stop looking?
How many people
do we greet by name
while knowing nothing
of their design?
Later, we were encouraged
to ask our questions
and then to set them down.
To watch.
Intellectual beauty likes to be solved.
Aesthetic beauty prefers to be witnessed.
One explains.
The other arrives.
So perhaps today
we step outside
without extracting meaning.
No schedules.
No proof.
Just a willingness
to stand still
long enough
for something ordinary
to show itself
as extraordinary.
And if we feel something
we cannot name,
let us resist the urge
to name it.
Let us watch.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025
Tag: Presence
Poem: Refreshment
There are moments when we
must stop
and look
and tend to
the unexpected and
deeply welcomed,
simply because
we live.
A lemonade stand
at the edge of the road,
cardboard sign wavering
between LEMONADE and LEMONAED.
The coins wait in a jar,
oblong ice accepts its fate
as tiny fingers stir
through mostly water.
Engines reconsider.
Appointments learn patience.
Briefcases bloom with splashes of sugar
any bee would envy.
My cat arrives
with the object he loves most.
Not the clean one.
The true one.
He sets it down carefully,
then looks up,
as if to say:
you’ll want to see this.
And I do.
The afternoon brightens,
pleased with itself.
Thoughts wander off
without wearing their shoes.
My eyes squint
in mixed morning light—
the bulb above the kitchen sink
and ribbons of sunrise through open blinds.
Coffee steams.
I smell it before I see it,
and then I do—
steam lifts
just as light
reaches the window.
Waking,
and God,
and refreshment
keep company
without comment.
—Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025
Poem: The Us We Can See
I am stationed at a wooden table
the size of a reasonable thought.
It does not wobble.
This feels like a small mercy
after watching my Americano
sway back and forth on the last.
Here, the Americano steams steadily
as if rehearsing confidence,
dark, uncomplicated,
uninterested in my opinions.
I wear fingerless gloves,
a compromise between dignity and survival.
My knuckles remain unconvinced.
Winter returns again and again
through the green-painted door,
carried on the backs of coats,
slipping in at ankle height,
lingering like someone
who has already said goodbye
but remains.
A woman at the counter
counts her change twice,
the last of her pennies
now a relic of a simpler time
when 1-2-3 meant something more.
A man near the window
keeps turning his cup
until the logo faces forward,
forgetting the face
with every sip,
which ends with a new turn.
A familiar dance, a waltz?
Sip-2-3, sip-2-3.
A woman with wiry white hair
removes a bright turquoise hat,
carefully crocheted,
leaving one thread to dangle
from a curl.
The thread hesitates.
So does she.
Heavy oak chairs keep their positions,
pretending not to notice
who chooses them and why,
practiced at holding
what is briefly certain.
A barista with inked forearms
wipes the same spot again,
loyal to a principle I do not know.
The clock on the wall yawns
while declining comment,
stretching its hands
in a familiar reach,
analog-2-3, sameness-2-3,
predictable without irony.
I lift the white mug,
my fingers watching and ready,
and remember how warmth
asks to be held,
while cold does not.
—Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025
Jill Szoo Wilson 