Waxing moon tilted into a fat smiling mouth
Palest pink veneer on the western sky at sunrise
Coal gray silhouettes of deciduous tree branches against the milky gray end-of-night sky, clumps of old leaves cling still in orblike bunches
Sound of a dog’s paws crunching hard-frosted grass blades
Muted winter sunlight at midday, the frigid air blanketing the sun
Hands buried in cold mud
Orion guiding a host of giddy, glittery constellations across thick black bedtime heavens
Hawks on power wires – sentries or companions or leaders down the narrow road
Powerfully ice cold “twentysomething” air filling my throat, nearly enveloping my corpus inside-to-outside
New hatch of miniscule milky gray insects thick in a pocket under citrus tree
Looking at, then remembering gratitude for, the tall old ragged conifer in the front yard
Fecund flooded swamp alongside the highway as I walk across the overpass
Desiccated, partly consumed chick on pavement below tree that I scooted into fallen leaves as a respectful “burial”
Blue bird resting on branch, song-talk draws attention
Grapefruit sized oranges fallen in yard in various states of dry, frozen, mush
Amber glistening sap chunked onto fallen bark
Vast open land leads my eye, or my heart, to the cantaloupe sunset ridge: how my own life has such a vaster spaciousness and my inner landscape is broad, interconnected, textured, brilliant
It seems that the only sacred act really asked of us is to be aware, to pay attention to all the tiny bits that sew together the larger scraps of our lives. From that simple act of being comes all the rest: compassion, integrity, peace…
(Excerpted from original post in Jan. 2013.)
