Look and see

Mother's Day this year included a fun dinner with family, some planting of garden seeds, and a late afternoon walk in the Cannon River Wilderness area. Shortly after Gregg captured the beauty of this bird in picture, we ran into a bird-watching couple who identified the type of warbler we saw (Blackburnian) and told us that it is unusual to view so many warblers: the birds sometimes migrate at night or over a period of just a day or two, and in many years the trees are leaved out by the time they make their migration making them much more difficult to see. But on this blessed day, we looked, and saw.

Look and See

This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew
to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back
of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused.
The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was laughing.

This afternoon a gull sailing over our house was casually scratching
it stomach of white feathers with one
pink foot as it flew.

Oh Lord, how singing and festive is your gift to us, if we only look, and see.

- Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early: New Poems