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| boulder in lake |
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
thin wet grass and 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 F” 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, scooting it into fallen leaves as
a respectful “burial”
Western 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 Western cantaloupe sunset ridge: how my own life has such a vaster
spaciousness and my inner landscape is broad, interconnected, textured,
brilliant
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| oozing, rubbery, shoestring sap |
Each one of these lasted but moments; the heady construct of
“time” cannot measure – though - the wealth, the richness, holding my
awareness. “Time” is irrelevant, however brief or long. It is the quality of the moment that holds value.
Over the past week, these tiny measured bits of my day only total to a few
minutes. But the significance of their presence, and my willingness to pay
attention, paint broad strokes of meaning into my workday. Even my dreams have
been impacted: swimming with and
stroking dolphins and whales, the raccoon-otter at the edge of my unconscious
reverie, the bobbing around in the middle of an ocean, the burnt dreamscape
derived from the actual one in the news article I read earlier that day…Somehow
these fragments of experience elongate, impervious to matters temporal, adding
spaciousness to this life.
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…
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| handprint in mud |
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
