Early Morning Songs

With the thermometer predicted to reach 100º + (37ºC) I went straight out to the porch this morning when I got up to watch the birds eat breakfast* and contemplate what to do about the ground squirrels who have now polished off all the basil and parsley in our kitchen garden. OilMan is working on some kind of cover but I fear it's too late for this crop.

It's lovely out on the porch, sunny and cool, with a clear view of the sky now that the plastic roof is gone. I sip my coffee, lean back against the cushions and contemplate life. So much changes, yet much remains the same. Learning to live more slowly, to be happy doing less, to appreciate the multitude of blessings, and be grateful for the lessons learned from the hardships...these are all thoughts best entertained in the early morning watching the birds...

...then the dump trucks start rumbling by, dozens of them up the mountain at the end of our road. There are lots of rumors about what is going on up there, but no way to know. Someone with a lot of money seems to be bent on making the mountain taller. I am jolted into action...If I thought life in the country would be quiet, I was certainly wrong, but there are definitely times when it is and I've gotten used to the rest.

In the afternoon sitting at my computer, my eye falls on what can only be described as 'a slim volume of verse',  At the Water's Edge,  poems written by my friend Peter Damm about a five month journey in Bali and Indonesia, where I was fortunate enough to meet him when I was teaching a yoga workshop. I pick up the book and start reading it again. It has lived almost forgotten on my bookshelf for many years and I am immediately struck by the following poem, which seemed to follow seamlessly upon my early morning musings....

LIVES
The days pass slowly
Singly
And make up a life.
We are not forged in a day
In the lightning flash of moments.
Our identities
The people we become
Accrue like sand
At the mouth of a canyon.
Storms
Sudden floods
Wash away or lay down
Deep deposits
Which then become
Layers
In the long alluvial history
Of our lives[/