in the cool of the morning

No matter what else is happening in your world,
and even when summer afternoons are scorchers,
you can still, like Adam and Eve, sneak out
in the cool of the morning and walk with God.
Find any woods, lake, meadow, or garden spot
and wander down whatever hillside, pounded path or
thicket that calls your name that day until something
makes you cry uncle and stop to wonder –
like a threesome set of trees that may have started
growing fifty years ago when you and your two sisters
also had their birth, a patch of bursting Queen Anne’s lace
mixed with delicate daisies, a cedar downed across a trickling
stream that invites a return with your six year old nephew,
berries presented like a good kindergarten teacher might
at just the right hour for your morning snack or a tulip poplar
that grew sideways at its base to reach the light but does not
topple because its roots hold it like fine tackles on a football field.

At each stop, declare Habakuk’s words, “The Lord is in his holy temple.
Let all the earth keep silence before him.”
In that silence, you might hear a titmouse twittering, a bee circling
until it lands, or the wind clapping the trees’ hands for them.
You may join in the applause.

Christmas 2003