the words are in place

A fish leaps
like a black pin--
then--when the starlight
strikes its side--

like a silver pin.
In an instant
the fish's spine
alters the fierce line of rising

and it curls a little--
the head, like scalloped tin,
plunges back,
and it's gone.

This is, I think,
what holiness is:
the natural world,
where every moment is full

of the passion to keep moving.
Inside every mind
there's a hermit's cave
full of light

full of snow,
full of concentration.
I've knelt there,
and so have you,

hanging on
to what you love,
to what is lovely.
The lake's

shining sheets
don't make a ripple now,
and the stars
are going off to their blue sleep,

but the words are in place--
and the fish leaps, and leaps again
from the black plush of the poem,
that breathless space.

 [Mary Oliver, "At the Lake," from White Pine]

    Sometimes the love that I feel is "just there," like one of so many outfits from which to choose. Sometimes it's a little less, like a nagging pain in one's back after sleeping in the wrong position for too long. And sometimes it's something else, something more. Today—most of the time, lately—it's more. It's like the first drink of water when you've been thirsty for several miles of a long car ride. It's like dry socks and a blanket, looking out the window at everyone else walking through the sloppy snow. It's like a hug from a friend before you even realize how dreadful you felt.
    It's watching An American in Paris with a very macho guy who I'd have sworn would hate musicals...wrongly. He really liked it, particularly the scene where Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) sings and dances "I Got Rhythm" with the horde of French children.
    It's this lyric from "Perfect One" by Lit:

"You are everything
That I never knew I've always wanted"Yeah.
    Incidentally, we also watched Once Upon a Time in Mexico, which was memorable for 3 scenes of a very different variety.

1. Johnny Depp's Agent Sands threatening Cheech Marin's Belini with the following: "You know that withholding vital information from a federal officer is a serious offense. Especially when that officer has paid handsomely for it and wouldn't think twice about ripping that patch off your eye hole and skull-fucking you to death."
2. In what I think is the most gross implication that I have ever seen, Sands' double-crossing girlfriend (played by Eva Mendes) and her cohort of bad guys (though in this film it is impossible to tell the bad guys and the double-crossers from the really bad guys and the triple-crossing back-stabbers) take a drill to Sands' eyes and screw his eyes out.
3. Very near the end, Antonio Banderas' character, El Mariachi gains his revenge on the man who killed his wife and daughter (Salma Hayek and Natalia Torres)--which actually happened during the film before this one, Desperado. The killer is a military general named Marquez, played by Gerardo Vigil. The two men are locked in a room in the presidential palace and do all sorts of macho posturing before El, using a rifle, literally cuts the guy off at the knees. He shoots his legs in half, at the knees. You see bones. Only. It is sooooooo gross. We watched it 3 times. Trust me, it is gross.