Sunday breakfast

Strawberry pancakes,
pan of roasted potatoes,
spinach omelette.

Swallows chittering -
Ahhh - I see they have returned
for another year!

Pink confetti snow
drifting into the gutters
puddling on sidewalks.

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

— Wendell Berry from Collected Poems 1957-1982

Fading lilac blooms
droop heavily in spring rain
moving into May.

Freshly washed new leaves -
glowing gems in the dim light-
rippling in the breeze.

Sky layered in grays,
lilac blooms are turning brown,
leaves burgeoning forth.

Every situation - nay, every moment - is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity. 
Goethe

Life is as long as
beautiful spring days
or languorous nights.

I know life is ex-
ceedingly short and getting
shorter by the day.

Lilac fragrance drifts-
in full purple-ly goodness,
through the open door.

Pink Moon - The Pond - Mary Oliver

You think it will never happen again.
Then, one night in April,
the tribes wake trilling.
You walk down to the shore.
Your coming stills them,
but little by little the silence lifts
until song is everywhere
and your soul rises from your bones
and strides out over the water.
It is a crazy thing to do -
for no one can live like that,
floating around in the darkness
over the gauzy water.
Left on the shore your bones
keep shouting come back!
But your soul won't listen;
in the distance it is sparkling
like hot wires. So,
like a good friend,
you decide to follow.
You step off the shore
and plummet to your knees -
you slog forward to your thighs
and sink to your cheekbones -
and now you are caught
by the cold chains of the water -
you are vanishing while around you
the frogs continue to sing, driving
their music upward through your own throat,
not even noticing
you are someone else.
And that's when it happens -
you see everything
through their eyes,
their joy, their necessity;
you wear their webbed fingers;
your throat swells.
And that's when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.
Its no more mysterious than that.
So you relax, you don't fight it anymore,
the darkness coming down
called water,
called spring,
called the green leaf, called
a woman's body
as it turns into mud and leaves,
as it beats in its cage of water,
as it turns like a lonely spindle
in the moonlight, as it says
yes.

Listen more often to things than to beings;
The fire’s voice is heard,
Hear the voice of water.
Hear in the wind
The bush sob:
It is the ancestor’s breath.
Those who have died have never left,
They are in the brightening shadow
And in the thickening shadow;
The dead are not under the earth,
They are in the rustling tree,
They are in the groaning woods,
They are in the flowing water,
They are in the still water,
They are in the hut, they are in the crowd:
The dead are not dead.
Listen more often
To things than beings;
The fire’s voice is heard,
Hear the voice of water.
Hear in the wind
The bush sob:
It is the ancestor’s breath,
The breath of dead ancestors
Who have not left,
Who are not under the earth,
Who are not dead.
Those who have died have never left,
They are in the woman’s breast,
They are in the wailing child
And in the kindling firebrand.
The dead are not under the earth,
They are in the fire dying down,
They are in the moaning rock,
They are in the crying grass,
They are in the forest, they are in the home:
The dead are not dead.
--Birago Diop

Chill, gray, early spring
morning - chartreuse maple pops,
bursting on bare limbs.

Lovely rainy day,
turning the grass emerald
against the dark earth.

Bradford pear leafing,
the shiny crow sits above
on mimosa branch.

The breeze
blossoms spring.

Taking morning tea,
the monk remains in silence -
chrysanthemums bloom.

Matsuo Basho