A Meadow's Sanctuary

© 2010 (Jim Sularz) A morning meadow - tall, red-yellow speckled, now, humbled low by the wind. Conifer sundials – mirrored shadows, slowly stretching, dancing, and then diminishing - along blurred edges of a lush, flowing sea. Feathered, high flying eagles soar, circling small and wide, against a blue, white pillowed sky. … a crow caws. Nuzzled prairie dogs, with tethered tails, scamper for cover, for danger spirals, just above. Harvester ants marching in tiny zigzagged columns, tunnel an ever deepened colony - twisting around creviced rocks and roots. Lightning fast gragonflies – thin tinsel winged airships, darting, spinning, some kissing. And white petite wild-flowers, bobbing from honey bees, stand quivering. Multi-colored butterflies flutter, undecided, and brown-helmeted grasshoppers oddly peer - like praying mantises, eager to leap. Chirping sparrows, with cocked tails, sand-bath in a warm, thirsty, summer sun. And cat-tails, bursting, pierce through a sparsely wooded island. A distant thunder-clap, and crawling, flat, anvil-headed clouds - slide down majestic, snow-capped mountaintops, marking the hour, like clockwork, this time of year. Dusk comes, bathed in a warm, orange-amber hue, waxing and waning with a melting sun. A red fox stirs, finding at twilight’s gate, fresh promising scents, for her young. And black masked raccoons steal away, through soft, cool moonlit grasses – in a hushed, clown-like parade . . . As I dwell in this sanctuary of place and spirit, beneath an infinite, star-painted canopy. I know with certainty - of mind, heart and soul, that when God’s rainbow palette had hardened and dried - All were - Forever One.