Looking Up

Looking up from a park bench
Into the steady summer breeze
Resting inside the warm shadow
Of cottonwoods as they silently drink
Deeply from water in the ground below me
And filled to fullness with life
They radiate satisfied joy into the world
Greeting all visitors to life’s surprise
Too many things are here
To see or feel and know
So I greet what I see
Three spider strands
Strung tight in the wind
Tiny speckled unseen souls
Still tethered to their tree
Invisible to glazed or tired eyes
No part of their strands
Can find me without teasing
Indigo, silver or ruby from the sun
So there must be even more of them
The strands' taught stillness in the breeze
Proves their length and strength would stretch
My own beliefs far past breaking
Pulling away from borrowed colors
My eyes find cotton-white down
Floating slowly above the strands
Freed from high and secret places
Nourished to seed over deep-rooted dreams
While my dog finds peace on patient flat grass
Dragonflies, hummingbirds, marsh wrens and more
Fly through the sky on their way to somewhere
That is only revealed when it's reached
And they all seem to know the trees
Better than I as their missions unfold
In front of naked never-questioning leaves
While a crow guards its nest
Calling harshly from silent branches
Above me - just to let me know
I am seen in the shade where I sit
As a threat to its young (which I am not)
And planes and clouds and insects
Fly safely through life's air we borrow
From the well of all things real