artist

She is such an artist, the sun.

I watched her rise today,

a brilliant yellow-orange backdrop

to the dark green silhouette

of the neighbors’ bamboo.

Her morning gold, silent as breath,

spreads wide,

slides between cane and leaf,

creates a shape-shifting mosaic,

light and dark,

shadow and shine.

She shoulders higher up the sky

with wise warmth,

quietly whitening thin-stretched clouds

feathered across the high, icy blue.

She is just getting started,

for the whole world is her canvas,

and she takes her time,

for she has all the time in the world.

Her fluid beauty ebbs and flows

as shade and light flirt,

drift,

slow dance,

weaving magic into the day,

sparking autumn-touched treetops

into gold and copper leaf-flames.

She is angling now to give us

her brightest and best

even as the days shorten and cool.

I will watch her paint this day.

I will watch her dance with shadow.

And maybe I, too,

will dance.

-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

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I have a friend who sees beauty in the bits of nature that most of us pass by or trample over and sweep away – chips of dry fallen leaves, torn and faded petals, tiny feathers, bits of broken rock, mini-twigs – detritus. I can hear my friend saying detritus with a gleam of passion in her eyes, a love for the detail most of us never even notice. Detritus. She sees beauty in it and draws its intricate patterns slowly, carefully, lovingly with the sharpest pencil lead and the finest-tipped pen. She’s an artist.

A piece of detritus appeared in my kitchen window this week, hanging there like a small suncatcher. When I took a closer look, I saw that it was a leafy lacework more or less the shape of a star a quarter-inch wide. It had ragged, irregular outer edges and framed an open center, a circle evenly trisected by miniscule spokes that made the tiny object look like a star-framed peace symbol. An almost invisible spider-silk holds it in place, and it sways ever so slightly in the breeze. I got the sharpest pencil I could find and drew it. Then I let it be.