I’ve burrowed inside during the last week of snow, ice, the endless deluge
of mudslide-threatening rain. Relief surges as I feel cold air on my face,
my belly warm and soft with gratitude to be awake before the sun crests,
in the pause before birdsong.
First I hear just one seagull’s mew, like a choir director scanning the rows
looking each in the eye with an encouraging nod, “Yes, welcome, let’s do this.”
Soon multiple gulls call and respond, robins and wrens chime in with tweets
and chirps. As the dark curtain rises, grey clouds rush eastward, the three Western
Hemlock across the way become backlit as they make their entrance,
branches swaying, beckoning, reaching their arms toward me.
Dōgen’s mountains walk, so why not these trees? Their trunks expand in all directions,
their root radicals creep beneath and beyond the arc of the canopy. Faith, faint
as an unbeliever’s, we call imagination. May I have eyes that see pines walk,
ears that hear the invitation of their embrace.
Love this. observing, listening.