a small whisper with the wren

Journal notes at the Flint River...02-18-12

Still,still, eternal woods.Vultures circle soundlessly high above. Every stump has a past,every leaf ,a song.A crow calls from the tall dead tree,again and again.Water ripples,unhurried.Two Beech leaves, caught up in the breeze,land in the river.Deer prints in the grey sand.

Nothing here seeks perfection.It is all messy,broken,twisted,full of holes,knobbed.Vine branches,logs and towhees calling from either side of the river.

Crows fly over heading West.Everything flows and opens like a lotus.Like the damp ground under my feet takes the rain,the sun and the broken mistletoe at my feet,light green and alone.

I am the self appointed abbess of the solitary spot.The leaves are my prayers heading downstream for their own purpose.This log is my desk and chair by a window.The choir?Crows,a wren and the towhees.The tall grey trees might be a cloud of witnesses as the pines sway their green tops to the music.The Beech leaves have messages written on their veins as they rattle down.

The abbess sees,listens and relishes all that is here.The word hurry disappears down the current.

The stump with the past,its story,leans towards the tall bare tree that is festooned with green mistletoe.One day,it too, will be a stump and that's just how it perfectly is in the eternal woods.

The sun peeks through the branches as if a bright white candle has been lit in the chapel and placed on a tall window.Lit for vespers,those praise prayers that are said every day throughout the world.Mine added as a small whisper with the wrens.

Unlike the monastery in Conyers,whose plain white cinder block walls glow in blue and pink ,when the sun gleams through the stained glass windows,the pale sun here brings out only the green and grey in reflections on the water of the river.

I am very present to this outpouring. Buddhists call it mindfulness.I am here with this, not back nor forward ;here, now, waiting for words to form.There aren't enough.