I don’t know many things, but I know how the fragile mouths of the morning glories lie open in the dusk, waiting to drink warm swallows from the sun, furling it inward to its star shaped filament and ovary for rest.

I know the melodic chant of the male whippoorwills in the river valley, how they perch their small brown bodies within the hedge to whistle chirp in a lovely three part trill. How effortlessly they sing the sun awake, sing to find their feathered mate perched somewhere nearby, waiting. The mysterious nightjars finding themselves and one another through the flickering of eyes and star song.

I know as my animal body is called forward under a new moon dreaming and out into the river valley humming its human rhythm before the big machine noises are awake, that I find myself quiet and observing the world like the night heron nested on the riverbank.

I know that we can’t possibly learn all that this world wants to teach us if we’re too loud in our own moral superiority and self righteousness to humble ourselves and listen.

I know, just as my Granny taught me, that if I am curious, I can allow myself to be carried along in the light of this world, which is not to deny the shadow and grief, yet to choose to carry them each.

I know that we can’t hear the small wings and learn the rhythm of our own if we don’t practice with diligent patience paying attention.