NIGHT WINGS

Ambling down the road into the rising morning, the slant of the sunlight just right to put a touch of red on the pendulous gold of the rice fields, I looked up and saw in the shadow from the far hill that the darker air too was filled with small sheets of flickering gold, rising and falling, to and from the light, on breezes I could not feel... Then my mind rose from thoughts of mere gold to a congregation of dragonflies testing their night wings in the first of this new morning with its absolute sun, its perfect air, and I could tell just by looking at the shining excitement of all those dancing spirits that they knew this world and this morning were precisely right.

NEXT TASK

Cleaning off some garden nets on this cold, cloudy and rainy but sometimes abruptly sunny morning great for rainbow surprises, I turned to scan the scene and decide on my next garden task when I saw, about 200 meters away, over the long slope of rice paddies terracing down toward the Lake, a cloud of large hawks - with those broad wings they can make quite a cloud - circling and diving all in one area, taking sudden turns diving out of sight behind a ridge-- likely a farmer over there tilling a paddy.

I love watching hawks, they make great eye food. There's also a centering magic in seeing the way they know the sky by heart, the way they show the invisible wisdom of the air itself in how they tweak their wings to ride it with such cavalier grace. I just stood there watching, finally letting my sleevepulling mind go gliding and diving on its own wings amidst the hawks, there against the green swoop of the mountainside.

Next task? What next task?

BEING MIRACLES

Climbing up the mountain road these Spring evenings at the hour of not quite dark, when all the sky is like a throw of velvet reflecting a distant light, almost as if you could reach up there and trail your hand among the tiny, brightening stars...

At about this time the sun-warmed earth, still damp from recent rains and now blanketed with the cooling air of day, sends out from all its secret palaces the richest of its fragrances, that ride on the air I rise through as I climb... All the perfumes are there, if you have the time...

Who knows how they come to be, these spices of life for each inhalation - cinnamon, oregano, thyme, it is a long list - it holds a hint of chocolate, of tea, there is apple, gardenia, mushroom, living earth, coffee, musk... The moments I pass through are rich... The night is an ancient acquaintance...

For whom does the night send out its secret perfumes, but those who can sense them? And why is it so? In the night, as in the day, it is to say in fragrance that all is interwoven, that none are apart. In each of these nights we are given to sense the miracles around us, all the more finely to perceive and enjoy the miracles of ourselves.