Place Where You Live:

Tunitas Creek Ranch, Half Moon Bay, CA

Early Morning

Bright moon still tugging the sky

as sun trickles in. The air is sweet and dense.

I am held in the slow illumination of this day.

High in the willow, the littlest birds –

the bushtits and hummingbirds –

prattle on, against the incessant knocking

of woodpecker. The quail, robins and occasional junco

prefer pecking the ground. Hundreds of other unseen birds

are calling in the dawn, weaving a tapestry of song.

 
Hours ago it was the owls whose voices

owned the night sky. It was the frogs and crickets and coyotes,

whose time had come.

 
Nothing here bores me. I read the sky from dawn til dusk.

I walk the same path again and again, witness to

the ever unfurling of the ground beneath me.

The redwood’s new growth looks just like feathers.

The toadstool a caricature of itself.

 
I could learn everything I need to know

from this land, practicing the person I long to be

in reverence.