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.

Although enchanted by the scene above through my window, I was totally surprised two weeks later when its image stirred something inside me and a poem started to form spontaneously.

If only I could be like the sunrise,
taking a high view of the world and all the people across it,

lifting the hearts of those who greet me and
accepting without opinion those who yawn and turn away;

transforming clouds into something glorious and
not regretting that the glory soon fades,

letting go of what I was yesterday
and embracing what I am today.

If I contemplated the sunrise each morning,
would I become more like one as days go by?

Perhaps I shall try it and see . . .

***************************************************************************

Last month was not the first time my husband and I had visited national parks and monuments in southern Utah. I was so enraptured by the experience, however, that it seemed as if I had never been there before. Encouraged by the response to my last post, which combined photos and poetry, I’m sharing my view of earth from Utah in that form. All pictures were taken in April 2023.

I’ll not speak of eons gone by
nor millennia to come,

I’ll not credit rain and erosion

nor cold, heat and chemistry.

Instead, I’ll give myself to this moment

as I feel the earth beneath me
and all around me too.

I’ll revel in the differences
that give the earth glory —

the towering and steep,

the round and low,

the striped, the checked, the layered,

the jagged and the flat,
in endless shades of tan, gray, and terracotta.

I’ll not recall names of those who came here before me,
nor names they bestowed on what they found.

Instead, I’ll fling my arms wide, tilt my head back,
and thank heaven for this moment on earth.

This is my first “photo poetry”: something I never heard of until it occurred to me that it was the only way to share how I feel as I study my images of trees. Most of these photos were taken last year near the California coast, a few hours’ drive north of San Francisco, and are best viewed on desktop or tablet.

What poem could I write about trees
that hasn’t been written before,

From time to time, a fly appears in my kitchen though I haven’t seen one anywhere else, inside or out. I find its persistence both awesome and annoying. But last November, a fly caught my attention more than usual.

“One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea.” I’ve always loved this quote of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, but while on vacation in Northern California last month, it became more than a metaphor to me.

A surprise may have double the impact when its source is unexpected, I observed recently.

Libraries are full of books about how to make the most of life. I’ve read the ideas in this month’s poem in several of them. But it took a lot of living and longing for me to grasp those ideas and still more longing to write them down.

Life and I are like a horse and its rider
journeying across all types of terrain
through every kind of weather,

The ground looked barren and wintery, but that didn’t daunt a small bird one day last month. It spent quite a while exploring, giving me a chance to observe and lose my heart to it.

Below the bedroom window one morning
a small bird appeared,
pecking here, jumping there, and pecking again
on lawn that had fallen asleep months ago.

It was alone as it pecked except for me,
who had no idea where he – maybe she – had come from,
yet found myself falling quite in love with it —
though it looked nothing special with its brown wings
and tan breast and dark hood which covered its head
from crown past its throat.

To take advantage of imposed social isolation, I considered sorting through stacks of family photos that never made it into albums. The photos are still unsorted, but the poem that arose is dedicated to my daughters Julie and Lisa.

She stood with her toes in the sand,
the tide lapping at her heels,
a small shell looking large in her little hand,
and the sunlight on her face beaming back at me,

and I loved the moment so much that
I turned away from it to find my camera
so I could save the moment I had just left,

but when I returned I was still apart,
for the lens lay between me and the moment
as I shifted the camera this way and that.

The moment didn’t wait –
it moved on and left me with nothing to save
but a self-conscious grimace. 

Now the memories of lost moments spread before me
like sheet music of children’s melodies
that can never be played again

but I take the lesson learned and
revel in a young woman’s concerto,
sometimes mournful, sometimes spirited,
played live in the moment.

For those of you who wonder whether I decided to continue 12 months of Christmas: I now celebrate the spirit of Christmas present by giving gifts when a need or opportunity arises but without promise or expectation. The gift giving has already begun, and it’s joyful indeed.