Sometimes I’m too entranced by a scene to leave it even briefly for my camera. That was the case the afternoon a poem came to me as I watched nature performing its art. Thanks go to my husband for the image of a rainbow taken a few weeks earlier.
I looked up from my book just in time
to see three raindrops glide down the window,
slightly sideways, one after the other, in perfect time,
as if their arrival had been choreographed.
Glancing skyward, I saw only gray
and wondered at their subtle sparkle as they slid.
Beyond them, the wind was directing
an odd sort of dance among the trees –
the blue spruce waved its branches up and down gracefully,
like a ballerina in slow motion,
while the young ash nearby flung its branches wildly
in every direction, sending its leaves into a frenzy.
Meanwhile, on the pond a short distance from the two trees,
six geese faced into the wind, as geese often do,
motionless, floating in a straight line,
equally spaced one behind the other.
They set me to musing whether they, too, were dancing
and making hard work look effortless.
Around them, water shimmered like green silk crepe,
reflecting tall trees in full summer regalia
in spite of the gray sky overhead,
thanks to light I couldn’t see.
I watched transfixed, pondering whether
the scene lay at the end of a rainbow,
for if the rare lighting wasn’t evidence enough,
I surely had found treasure.