It strikes me that each dawn is unqualified, unrepeatable. There is nothing which could prepare me for this morning, standing alone among the mornings of the world. It could be the first morning of my life or the last, and it would be the same: familiar and alien as the morning star.
Nothing could have prepared me for the silence of the trees today, the gigantic moth swooping from the shadows at the end of my walk, or the bottle-lace silhouette of the basketball hoop against the eastern sky; for the dark smudge of doubtful, semi-slumberous geese edging the pond, the watchful grace of the egret moving through muddy water—or for the birds arising, answering each to each.
It’s easy to see all these things as somehow having lived it all before; as though the stars and the trees and the pond have seen this morning already, every day for a thousand years, and I am the newcomer—wide-eyed on a weary earth. But we stand before each other all at once, the stars and the geese and I: simultaneous expressions of a single Word, confronting with equal wonder this expected and marvelous, extraneous, gratuitous, disconsolately beautiful birth.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
ethelweard 
I am truly sorry that I have taken so long to comment on this beautiful piece of writing. Sometimes something that someone else has written changes everything for me. This is one of those things and I don’t even know how to begin to say it without sounding trite. But I needed to be reminded of egrets and muddy waters and stars. And I needed to be reminded that I need to get out there and see it. And be thankful.
So, thank you.
This is beautiful and it changes everything.
Thanks so much for this, Les. I’ve been feeling off my game with the last couple of posts (sporadic though they have been!), and this means a lot. (I’m sure my ritual egret would be pleased to know his fame is spreading!)
Also, I had a very silly dream about you recently…in which you were perched on a roof (obviously), insisting, with some excitement, that there were 9 spaces between your fingers. In demonstration of which fact, you proceeded to hold up four fingers and count the spaces between them…three times. I’m not sure whether your subsequent look of triumph was completely justified…:D
I know about the off my game thing. I know about it a lot.
Also, that dream makes perfect sense to me. I used to practice spreading my fingers apart on a desk and going as fast as I could jamming a pencil in the spaces between them. Back and forth, back and forth until I punctured myself. I was really good at it though (not to brag) so I probably had waaaay more than nine spaces.
Also, I like roofs. I think I’ll get on mine tonight.