Stand Tall

 

I find myself walking through a couple lovely pastures several times per day. What great fortune. When I do I try to remember to do the following: Smile.  Stand up straight and walk tall; head high, shoulders back. I pull my stomach in a little. I feel my body in relationship to the rest of the environment.

Then I stop and take note of something along the way.  It might be a cloud, the ocean, or a small tuft of sheep wool, a blade of grass, a drop of water...  There are plenty of things to notice, if I give it my attention.  All of this helps settle and reset my mind.  If I am "down"  I come up. If I am "up" I have joy.  It quiets me and at the same time fills me with riches.

 

I think this could be done by anyone, anywhere.  Walking through the city, across a room, by the ocean, in a parking lot.

It takes but a moment.

Give it a try and tell me what you experienced.

Paul  A

 

Homage to a Spider

To the spider, whose web I knocked down while
Walking to the outside shower:
I know it is a hardship for you,
All your labor for naught.
And if by this innocent act I harmed you
Stole your very life
I offer my poor apology.

It has come to my attention that I have likely
Bungled my way through many of my days
Creating some significant measure
Of pain, of sorrow,
In the flailing attempt at my own life,
To those weaker, smaller and so perhaps
Less fortunate
Undeserving of their fates.

I seek forgiveness from the universe and find
Small solace in that fact that it has created me
Brutish and yet self-aware
With some sort of purpose for each
Spider and man.

One Good Thing

Today

Take everything you have
All of your life
The wealth that you have accumulated
Gifted down to you through the ages
The brilliance of your creation
Transcended from the beginning of the universe
All that has created you and sustains you
All that you know and all that you know you will never know
And use it to do one good thing of your own choosing.

A spider taught that to me this morning.

I saw the sun shine on and define its singular creation
An orb of web, the brilliance of which might take me a lifetime to understand,
The beauty of which took only a moment to recognize.
It is the spider’s one thing,
Its contribution to this day.
It is one good thing,
Maybe two...

Into the Misty Vapor

Staring across the pasture,
I wonder at the rain sweeping up the mountain
And the fog laminating the forest in the distance,
Bending the view
So that the trees become bleary specters,
So that their green and gray spirits might come out to play and display,
A show that is free for the seeing, from this vantage.
 

A winding path leads me out,
Familiar to my step and eye
And yet new, wildly wet and blown
On this day of apparitions.
 
And then I see it, as it sees me,
In a frozen moment,
Both of us somewhat disbelieving,
Each struggling to make sense of this newly broken reality.
 
It is hunkered down low on the ground
A puddle of white and barred brown,
Wings braced, leaning into the driving gusts.
And then too suddenly it takes flight,
And so with it my eyes and heart,
Lifted to a new place
That I will willfully follow long after
The owl has disappeared over the tree line
And into the misty vapor.