On Gazing From a Meeting House

                             

The Friends' meeting house that she attended for many years. 

I sit in the old Quaker meeting house with the door open,

The autumn sun pouring in.

And I look across the Friends’ graveyard to two trees behind the stone fence that divides Quaker property from that of its neighbors.

One, an evergreen, defies autumn’s changes.

The other, bowing to the season, assumes a mantle of yellow leaves, harbingers of the winter to come.


A gentle breeze sets the leaves dancing.

Suddenly, a flock of birds from the evergreen fly into the neighboring tree and are lost from sight, they blend so well.

But as I watch, one of the yellow leaves takes flight, a late goldfinch, perhaps.

I then notice a red leaf among all the golden ones, and think of the cornucopia of colors in the months to come.

But this red leaf too takes flight, a cardinal, perhaps looking for some seeds or simply glorying in his scarlet cardinal-ness.


I ponder.

The leaves and birds are indistinguishable, mutually camouflaged.

What some would call happenstance I call grace.

The walls of the meeting house are made of rocks rich in fossils.

One need only look to see the earth's past.

Birds, trees, fossils all conspire to make sacred the present moment.