This Morning

The sky is gray this morning, after 24 hours of rain that brought over 5.5 inches down from the sky.  The air is full of energy, leaves are dancing.  It's cool, and feels much more like autumn than the middle of summer.

I held onto the tip of a slender branch and felt the pull of the wind as it blew against the leaves, trying to lift the branch up and away from me like a sail filling with air.  The uniform grayness of the sky masked movement in the clouds, until the shifting winds created a thinner layer of cloud and the brightness of the Sun began to glow.  It soon faded, behind thickening grayness.  

A soaring vulture burst into the sky between treetops, riding with the speedy wind, then circling back into the flow and appearing to pause before speeding off downwind. Songbirds flitted from tree to tree, and a squirrel scampered along an oak branch high overhead.

There's so much happening, wonderful things to see and feel, that last just a moment and then they're gone.  Nature is profligate with its riches, and has no attachment to them.  They appear, then they're gone, and then more appear, never the same, always changing.  The ones I see are the only ones I know.  There must be countless more that I miss because my senses and attention are limited.

The only thing I can be sure of is that I cannot predict what may appear, or when.  I can only be present, open to whatever occurs, ready to be surprised and amazed.