Awake with first light,
tiredness lifted from my body,
the energy of sun and water
finding its way into my heart.
A grey wing junco
sits for a fluttering instant
on a bench near the point
and for a moment we trade places –
the bench a perch for junco me,
skittering over the warming ground
looking for worms with a bird’s heartbeat,
so much to see and feel
in the compressed life of a feather.
Back in my human body
with the slow pulse of years,
I notice the shag bark and smooth skin
of the reaching madrone pulling up from root
into the broadening leaves of April,
and for a moment we trade places,
the yearning earth flowing through my branches,
the hope of green flooding into the newly lit sky;
the pulse of this heartbeat slow and melodic,
drumming the gravelly soil
along the rock and into the sea.
Easing in and out of this body,
trading places with my children,
becoming their son or daughter,
with my friends, feeling their joys and sorrows,
walking in the two-legged way,
alive and still eager for the mystery.
This one just brought a full-mouthed, sunny smile to my face! 🙂
Same Here Marco! What a Dance! What a Life!
I love the last line. As I do my walk daily with the dogs I too find my self moving in and out of the elemental beings that surround me. It must be a function of ol’ age. What do you think??
Thanks for the continued exploration of the mystery through your song.
So Beautiful… so natural… sets me up perfectly for my first client this morning.
A site visit up to Mt. Hood was canceled today, much to my disappointment. This like so many of your other poems transports me out of the office and provides a welcome respite in the natural world, if only for a few moments. I can almost hear the wind in the trees and the waves breaking on the shore. Thanks.
Your images of oneness with the natural world speak to my soul.
A beautiful description of the power and fluidity of oneness.
Got me in the spirit for this weekend of camping & kayaking with the boy scouts.
Nicely connective Don.
thankfully life is a great mystery and yet, it is by becoming that which we seek communion with that we come to know the joy of simply being, simply connecting and one thing naturally leads to another. To borrow from the movie Shakespeare in Love- how does it all happen? “I donno- its a mystery! I love that line- blessings
Don,
I love the basic in and out rhythm of this poem, like the line of a wave on the beach. It’s one of the mysteries of the human consciousness that we can “trade places,” and you handle the verbal challenge deftly. Bravo, my friend!
Beautiful and cosmic…The many ways we can feel into the world around us and be revivified….