Study or Savor?

Every once in a while I come across writing that takes my breath away. Listen to this passage from "The Oar: A Summer in Three Acts" by Chris Dombrowski which appeared in the December 2010 issue of The Sun. http://www.thesunmagazine.org/
I cast into the glare-coated water and watched the lure pause on a cushion of current before the trout plucked it from the surface. I caught a small cutthroat with dark bars on its scales--an indication that it was still a parr and too young to go to sea. Luca asked me to let the palm-sized, parr-marked fish go. Little parr-marked boy, wild and pure.
Part of me wants to pull this passage apart to figure out what made it work so well. But another part just wants to sit with it and savor its light.

Thanksgiving musings

I was recently reminded of my gratitude as a new writer, who had never been published, for the great gift that writing gave me of living life attentively.
No future bestseller, no grand award, would ever be as wondrous as this.
I think poet Lisa Starr speaks to that same sense of paying attention in her poem "Because," recently published in the Providence Journal.
Here is the link:
http://www.projo.com/books/content/Rhode-Nov.-poem_11-21-10_7DKNBM6_v11.18cd915.html