Temporal Openings

On wonder

There’s a magnolia tree outside a cottage near where I live.

For most of the year, perhaps ninety-five percent of it, it’s completely dormant, easy to pass by.

Then sometime in March a small arc of time opens and the magnolia comes into bloom.

Almost overnight the branches are filled with pale blossoms.

It happens in an instant, and a week or two later petals are scattered across the ground.

Every year it has become a reminder of something I find easy to miss.

Temporal openings.

Small windows of time when something precious appears.

Something rare, significant.
Something wondrous.

Many things in life disguise themselves as continuous when in reality they exist only in narrow windows.

Perhaps by holding their transience in mind we magnify them, allowing their imprint to remain long after the moment has passed.