Tonight I invite in the snow-covered field
and the towering ponderosa
with their bark that smells of butterscotch
and the thin winter river capped with deep ice.
I invite in the dormant soft-leafed mullein
and the rabbit brush coruscated by mice.
I invite the hungry mice.
I invite it all into my being—
fling wide the doors of my heart that somehow
forget to stay open.
I invite in December’s chill and the vast blue sky
and the dark before the moon and the moon.
I invite in the braille of rabbit tracks
and I invite the rabbits that made them.
The jays and the chickadees and the grosbeaks.
The dried sedges and the evergreens.
I don’t want to play favorites.
I want to be open to the all of it—
want to know the truth of how
it is already at home in me—
the thistle seeds waiting for spring,
the badger, the spider, the wind.
Every thing and every being.
What is not my teacher?
Let me make of myself a body spacious enough
for an inner circle in which all may speak.
And let me listen. With my whole being
let me listen—to what is seen,
to what can never be seen.
Every day, the earth sends thousands of invitations
for us to meet this world.