A Pastoral Told in Time

Seagulls are sitting on slack tide. A fish is jumping out of nowhere. The sky is deepest blue; the sun is radiantly unobservable.

Leaves are floating like a constellation. Another leaf is falling from the heavens. A single wisp of cloud is playing like a dolphin.

Pleasure boats secured to docks are currently approaching nowhere. A cormorant is diving in reflections of its sky.

A breeze is picking up and diamonds start to sparkle on the river. A pure white moth is fluttering in reverence nearby.

A Pastoral Told in Spirit

While contemplating boats upon the river being put away like little toy things at the end of summer play,

I see a falling leaf fall on my folded hands and feel its weather-beaten revelations.

Universal consciousness is like a tree and every insect-riddled sunburnt leaf is just another apparatus cast away in time

making way for its replacement, next spring's gold device continuing the amplifying of awareness in the ground of Buddha nature.

I Am is what I truly am; this body-mind is just another leaf that obsoletes with time, no need imagining some narrative device like death

to tell its story. Trees themselves are speaking truth and beauty in a shimmering October morning glory.