I’m on my way home. The clouds in my rearview mirror

keep moving over the Cascades, casting long shadows

across Three-Fingered-Jack. I’m following their course

as they break westward in a line of scattered strokes.

I believe in the rising moon, the last light growing dim

above overplowed fields, that there is knowledge

in the world’s ways, in a band of speckled starlings

chattering in the pines, in the steady flight of a barn owl.

I’m embarrassed by my lack of harmony, thinking

that I’m all by myself, while all around me Nature goes on,

effortlessly, in pure and simple rhythm.