Soon

Lingering in happiness

After rain after many days without rain,
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground
where it will disappear — but not, of course, vanish
except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share,
and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;
a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole’s tunnel;
and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,
will feel themselves being touched.

Mary Oliver
Why I wake early, page 71

Mary Oliver’s powers of observation are so keen that she, more readily perhaps than most, recognises the hidden universe of the unseen.

What marvellous grace and poise affords such profound contemplation of individual rain drops and their passage from rain cloud to oak root and on to mole tunnel and long dry pebbles?

In such a stillness, cool or dark or dry, one may anticipate vivifying touch. Soon.