Waking - Richard Wehrman

He woke again, as he always
did, out of nothing into
something; the wind woke too,
barely there, a dry exhale of
breath over the leaves,
over the dry grass, and he noted
how complete he felt, in this
almost not hereness, only the
edge of awareness, the quality
that noted, that attended to,
and beyond that nothing else
at all, though it was coming back,
the body's sense of being...

...and the single
sounds that arrived before
sight, for he had not yet opened
his eyes -- so a single scrape,
a rough-edged rasp, which carried
no meaning...
(was it the sound of a bird?)...
he could not tell; just the arrival
of sound, before you called it
sound, and it was just it,
what it was, and now he opened
his eyes, and the hill streamed in,
simply in that moment was,
where before it was not, as it
was again as his eyelids closed,
and the heat of the sun on his legs
as the bird, a different one,
called three single cries,
and as the wind moved again,
he smiled.

Richard Wehrman

From: Being Here

~

Photo taken by my brother
Bethel, Maine