Rustling Leaves

Rustling leaves
a robin
awakens me

Walking down the sidewalk on a bright late Winter day, I was absorbed in thinking, caught up in ruminations about the past and future. Suddenly, startled by a sound next to me I looked down. There was a robin, squatting among brown, dried out leaves, looking up at me quizzically. …

As I write this now, the mind wants to make it into some kind of metaphor. Yet all it was is what I described. There was a sudden sound that shifted attention from thinking to the sensory world. Attention shifted from the narrow world of thought, of past and future, to the lively spacious world of now. So much more vital than any metaphor could be.