Cormorant

                                                                                Google Image

A black bird rises quickly from the river into the breast of a gentle breeze. Turning tightly downstream, the bird swoops beautifully toward the rounded rippling body of deep water. It is just the bird and me in this full and simply complex world but nothing is missing and there is no room for anything else. The bird was feeding and I am walking neither of us knowing we are blessed in this moment.

I watched the bird carve a long moment from the breeze with its sleek black wings and start a slow assent downstream. Before I could imagine it, the lone cormorant flying fast and low turned to follow a distant bend in the river leaving me alone but filled with tearful feelings that I can’t explain.

Cathedral

                                                         Google Image

Mist settles close under winter’s cool breath
Hushed quiet looks straight through to my soul
Everything is raw and everything is important
Our future is always ready for us to appear
Always greeting us an excited servant of life
In every-way it knows everything is earnest
It reminds us that life rolls-on never sleeping
Then in a moment - just like every other one
Unrehearsed, we are returned home again
To that earlier familiar place of forgetting
That truthful place that we wandered
And the community we never forgot
So let go of the facts learned in school
Hold on to the things you know in your heart
Let life and learning fold back into their dreams
And long for a truth that you really need to know

The Past

 
                                                                                            Google Image
The mist is heavy enough
To silence a green Ocean
As if a wave is waiting
For the wind’s encouragement
To rise and rush at the shore
With an important story
From a far off salty sea
Painting, singing or sculpting
Its own exotic past for us
  On rock or wet sand beaches
Like a star’s light streaming
Across the black night sky
It brings us far lost moments
While we stand alone forgetting
Warm stories from our own rich past

Winter Morning

                                                creative103.com photo

I sat on a cold driver’s seat in darkness
And fit the key in the ignition by feel
The car seemed to think about starting
When I turned its old key fast past run
But the manual choke revved the engine
And promised to warm the car in a while
My cold left hand let go the steering wheel
And buried itself in the warm nest of my legs
I knew it wouldn’t take long to warm up
As the softly frosted windows cleared
For a moment with each spray of fluid
I watched the windshield for progress
It was beautiful,,, a clear playing field
Of mystery and beauty for water and frost
As the sweet warm breath of a childlike God
Was playing across my glistening window
Each bouquet of frost spread out in pans
  Forming quickly in a white magical way
Giving each streetlight six pointed ray
After the engine warmed - no frost survived
What a miracle of water and frost I watched
As if they never heard of the rules
That fashion all the other compounds

One specific example is that water expands when it changes from a liquid to a solid.  This is the opposite of most other compounds which typically shrink in volume as they solidify.  In other words, while other compounds typically increase in density when they 'freeze' - ice density is lowed when it freezes.  This means that ice floats on water and therefore the bottom of lakes remain accessible to aquatic organisms for living and feeding.  Without this unique physical property - life would not exist here on earth as we know it.  Ecological diversity would probably be much lower than it is today (if water dependent life survived at all).  Bottom dwelling aquatic insect species in far northern and far southern aquatic habitats would be most severely affected if ice were to increase in density when it froze.  Sinking ice would likely starve or kill these organisms and stress all the other species that depend on them.

Longings and Wishes

                                                                              Google Image


All you need to do is to notice your love just one time
And you'll always know its there as the world changes
So there is no need to pretend the promise of an other
And if we wish to change an old unsatisfied longing
Like a fish long out of water it will loose its lit colors
As life within it disappears invisibly with its struggle
Until no breath can breathe life back into its dream
Some longings can hide in our past but still reach us
Longings that we wish we never knew or grasped on to
Shiny lives we dreamed when it made good sense to us
But life changes for all of us and we so seldom look back
Time moves and our heads believe we can’t see that way
Minds think the past has been poured and sits forever set
So walk lightly with your wishes and feed them every day
Love them one-day-at-a-time until you stand together
And they grow into you and you grow into them
Until they take you to the place you are already at
Where you can walk forever in your own dreams

Blackened Bark

                                               photo credit Steve Norman
I see the burned tree
Just there above the roots
Was it a lightning strike
Or a grass fire uncontrolled
That marked this tree
I can’t tell by looking
At the ground around
Or at other old trees
Below the winter breeze
As their living tops sway
Beneath the breathing sun
It's an old tree from its size
With a scar near its roots
Much like one I gathered
In my own young innocence
The scar long forgotten
By the tree’s tender tips

Fir Tree

                                   Google Image
Broken branches lie on the ground
They were nipped off by yesterday’s wind
It combed hard through the winter forest
We all stayed away from the forest that day
To let the wind litter its danger from above
When calm returned the wind had done its work
The high forest waved soft and clean and green
In the early light of a quiet morning’s birth
While all the broken branches seemed satisfied
To lie still on the ground around their trees
I think these branches were never alive by themselves
But were the high-up pathways that life traveled within
As it longed to reach the sun, feel the clouds or hear birds
Until the wind broke them off and dropped them to the ground
Their needles still green and fragrant with life’s sweet breath
Summer birds will never notice the missing brittle branches
As they will perch and sing and nest on other branches
And life will find other pathways through its trees to travel
We will also make new pathways to walk along if we need to