7:15 Sunday at Holmes Lake

7:15 Sunday at Holmes Lake

Sometimes, the grid is laid with gravel.

But, today, I want to be silent.

So I shift my feet off path, to soft soil,

my presence now muted.

Is it a denial of self to want to be absorbed by

everything around me?  
To long to lay down among the morning-light miscanthus

and look up?

Maybe it is something quite the opposite

--a blossoming of self in the presence of others.

Pressed against the warm earth, I disappear,

watching skeins of geese stretch above, noisily recalibrating.

My ears awaken, tickled by the chit-chit-chit-whirrrrr of red-winged blackbirds.

Agitated and full of sex, red-breasted robins circle,

swirling upward like angry dry leaves in the wind.

I am awash in this beautiful, this perfect science

--the audaciousness of a crab-apple blossom breaking through

--the sweet, iron-tinged scent of a rain cloud as it moves overhead

--the umber flash of fox, trolling for voles along the dam’s backside

I love my people, to be sure.  

But, some mornings, I love the wild world even more.