Let’s re-ignite Spark & Spitfire with a haunting poem that, in many ways, explains my absence the past few weeks due to a major depressive episode which is a core feature of my diagnosed clinical depression.

Adrift

by Mark Nepo

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes a duet of 

wonder and grief. The light spraying

through the lace of the fern is as delicate

as the fibers of memory forming their web

around the knot in my throat. The breeze

makes the birds move from branch to branch

as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost

in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh

of the next stranger. In the very center, under

it all, what we have that no one can take

away and all that we’ve lost face each other.

It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured

by a holiness that exists inside everything.

I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

About this poem, Mark Nepo, a spiritual teacher as well as a poet, writes:

“I didn’t know this truth until I followed the depth of my feeling to its unexpected conclusion. This insight was the reward for staying open to both the beauty and the loss. Suddenly, it was clear that beauty and sadness coexist, that they open up a holiness that exists inside everything, which can’t be accessed unless we settle below our arguments with life into a spaciousness opened by acceptance.”

All photos taken at sunrise on Friday, August 21, 2026.