Mother Nature

Do not mistake what you see all around you

everyday,

underfoot,

blurring past your peripheral vision.

This is not nature:

in all its glory,

wild,

with a life and energy

of its own

untouched by human ingenuity or imagination.

But should you find yourself in the wilderness,

do not mistake what you see all around you,

the grandeur,

the minute,

the soul tugging wonder of wherever you look.

This is not Nature.

This capital N creation is in our minds

and nowhere else.

We are shaping the mystery and the meaning

from our experience

and making the world

Good

or Nothing.

So when I step from my back porch,

minutes before sunrise,

the sky is the color of sky,

it is the same,

and different,

from the day before.

There’s a glistening of dew

on the Central field,

reflecting,

in each droplet,

that sky.

Who could possibly care how imperceptibly

the sky lightens?

A cottontail freezes in the grass.

No, it’s just a rabbit sitting in a mixed bunch

of weeds and grasses cut uniformly short.

Lilacs,

early this year.

No, I’m mistaken,

again.

It’s wisteria,

so unbelievably full of weeping blooms.

I peek through a hole in the fraying bamboo screen

and I see and hear a human-made waterfall.

But the earth is moving beneath my feet,

at a thousand miles an hour,

give or take,

as I walk toward East Heights.

The sun is rising just north of east

behind the clouds -

there, it breaks through,

a glowing orange.

I turn,

every window on Fraser

reflects the light,

then the sunlight

fires the flags

and on down the face of the building

like a burning bush.

I’m already on my way home.

The mist in the air

glows golden above the asphalt

of 15^th Street against the new growth of the trees

when I look back over my shoulder.

And the sun,

relative to the earth,

remains unmoved;

it is my path

rising up beneath my feet

at an imperceptibly

furious pace.

The brick walls of Central

are awash in the color of the sun

as it bleeds through the long angle

of atmosphere.

The effect is not to be believed.

Or might only be believed.

For Nature is in our minds.

The artificial prairie of the Central field,

budding trees around the perimeter,

and a line of power poles,

the wire sagging gracefully

from the pull of gravity

each time the tall, dead tree trunk releases its grip –

and on to the next pole,

a spider’s web of energy and information.

Life, the universe, and everything,

is so much repetition,

ordinary tasks,

mundane,

everyday,

business.

And the sun will rise again tomorrow,

whether we sleep,

or wake.