On being astonished

Mary Oliver says " Work is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. " This fall I have spent more time in the woods than ever. Every day I am , as she says , astonished by something. The tiniest bird camouflaged in a dark rotting tree. The thinnest layer of ice on the pond looked more like a topographical study than frozen water. A cluster of pine cones that Andy Goldsworthy might have arranged around a tree stump yet I know it was nature's random version of perfection. I am learning to love the bare branches of November. I can see more and the sun can easily find me now.