The Waiting Game

The following poem was written on retreat at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico at a workshop with Natalie Goldberg and Wendy Johnson: Mind of Autumn: Timeless Writing and Zen

Someone said, "If you see clouds in the morning
it is certain to rain
in the afternoon."

Is that a promise, I wonder?
Some folklore of the Sangre de Christo Mountains?
Does pilot know this and cricket, too,
when a cloud casts a shadow on morning dew?

Nature beguiles, this I know.
The suspense in expectation tells me so.
She doesn't plan the burst of shower, the ray of Sun.
She waits until our glance is gone.

The sunrise that tricks, a thousand hues,
The rainbow. The pinecone, wonder anew.
Sit and listen. Secrets are shared,
That one who hears Nature will never be prepared.

For the moment of Awe,
At a hummingbird's shimmer,
The drip of a raindrop of pine needle's center.
The push of a cloud into dragon or bear.
The patterns of breeze as lake's skin meets air.

Sit and listen. She waits for you,
To lose your compass, your time, your place.
To awaken the pulse, stirred by grace.

The grace of alive.
The blessing to see,
The bounty of nature just sitting under a tree.