Lurking in the fantastic rock and icy rime formations in far
off Patagonia
Mutely testifying in the ancient volcanic peaks of
Colorado’s snowy San Juans
Now glowing greenly with life behind the mists of a
waterfall in western Canada
Once again in the dusty sunset casting orange shadows upon
the Sahara dunes
Overt in the tender embrace of the Emperor penguin pair late
in March
Subtle in the bird-filled potholed beauty of summer on the
Northern Plains
In the deep blue of ocean waters far from shore, it came to
me once again
So strong in Autumn when the trees ignite in their colored
riots
In the books of physiology, anatomy, astronomy and cosmology
There in the depths of her brown eyes and the soft timbre of
her voice
Echoed in the stately waltz of sun’s planets, moons,
asteroids and comets
Exploding into the air with the glistening Dali colors of
leaping giant blue marlins
Sensed in the sound made by a heavy snowfall when all else
is so very still
Mirrored in the music made by those who bring it forth for
us to bear witness
Exactly the same thing from the loon far off across one of
countless northern lakes
Part of the cold but fiery light that flares just for
moments on distant peaks, near sunset
Chanted in river songs that never change theme but never
repeat a single riff
Whirling under the great hazy wheel of the Milky Way on
moonless winter nights
Left in messages on mossy boulders, tilled and striated by
ice age glaciers
Within the phases of the moon and the slow flowing of the
sun with the seasons
The amazing electromechanical mystery of a lifetime of
regular heartbeats
The physical constants which could not differ, even in their
8th decimal place
Pattern and order of huge swells coming to the shore in
perfect weather
A baby elephant surrounded by aunts as he peeps out from
under his mother
Warm-blooded miracle of the mighty bluefin tuna racing in
schools at 35 MPH
The earth’s heat balance unconsciously maintained by the
great ocean currents
Marine fossils upthrusted in the high Himalayas, tracing
millions of years in earth’s history
The massive blue whale gently nudging her newborn upward, to
its first breath of air
Mathematics we uncovered which predict the orbits of
heavenly bodies
The ability to see backwards in time through the lens of a
telescope
The complex web of interactions that makes up good living
soil
The orderly struggle of succession that results in a stately
climax forest
The fault tolerance of the mammalian brain in its reaction
to even savage trauma
The incredible functionality bundled within every tiny
common house fly
The feel of the gnarled exposed inner bark of an ancient
bristlecone pine
Pondering those Greek, Roman, Mayan, Incan and Cambodian
ruins
Puzzling over the differences between the uncountable and
the infinite
Visualizing length from the quantum scale to light years in
distance
Imagining time intervals from tiny Planck units to the
estimated age of the universe
Mute testimony of a feathery archaeopteryx, petrified for
unimaginable eons
Miracle of the hummingbird in flight revealed by ultra slow
motion film
Spring dawn over the Andes flying south from short and gray
northern December days
The wonder at our invention of cheese, wine, bread and beer
The boggling number of stars in each of the astonishing
number of galaxies
Mystical, detailed and semiotic patterns on the birds,
reptiles and amphibians
Perfect silent grace of a healthy mature tree, wherever it
was chosen to testify
Surfing the warm salty ocean with a view of snow-capped
Mauna Kea
Love which lasts for years even as the crazy world changes
while we age
Observing Petri dish population growth curves over time
Trying to grasp the timeframe of earth’s ages in comparison
to man’s short history
Earthrise on a silent starry black background, tiny against
the surrounding void
Realizing the meaning of our endless, futile and brutal
religious struggles
Seeing our perfect footprints completely erased by that
first gentle wave
Shivering with wonder at the wolf’s lonely howl in the
endless winter night
Realizing the hopeless, but inescapable, moral mandate,
despite our endless struggle
Involuntary loss of vision, strength, vigor, endurance and
fluid intelligence
The consummate and non-reflective, totally unstrained
adaptation of all the cats
The instantaneous color responses of the octopus to changes
in background and stimuli
Computing acceleration and velocity and their changes at any
instant
Seeing dolphins and seals riding the waves for their own
personal reasons
Watching killer whales toss live baby seals into the air to
teach their own offspring
That deep, true aboriginal veneration of the earth and its
cycles and its creatures
Tacit, yet unbreakable, contract of the bear, salmon, eagle,
coyote and raven
The whisperings of a spring tide running strongly into a
wide and deep inlet
The welcome warm sun on a cool day upon emerging from clean
water
Being very close with a loved one as you both prepare for
them to pass away
Laughing out loud time and again until our stomachs are sore
and tears fill our eyes
Missing the rhythm and beauty of all existence long before
we leave it
Glory of the late Pleistocene mega-fauna, now all gone away
once and forever
The 100 million year reign of the dinosaurs already over for
65 million years
Tales of the Black Death, its Grateful Dead and our ashes
all falling, falling down
Peaceful sounds of children at play mixing with bird songs
from all directions
Rapid tracings of an electron gun we perceive as a stream
from another reality
Raptor crying overhead casting echoes down a quiet canyon
The lessons we pass on from our slaughter of the buffalo and
the Indians
The tectonic peregrination of the very continents, all about
the globe
A sideways glimpse caught in an unexpected mirror by a
momentary stranger
Watching as wavelets from our pebbles merge and fade away
upon a quiet pond
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