Today's poem - The Shining Moment in the Now by David Budbill

Another wonderful poem from David Budbill. I offered a spring one almost six months ago, and here, his setting is the fall.

This Shining Moment in the Now

When I work outdoors all day, every day, as I do
now, in the fall,
getting ready for winter, tearing up the garden,
digging potatoes,
gathering the squash, cutting firewood, making
kindling, repairing
bridges over the brook, clearing trails in the woods,
doing the last of
the fall mowing, pruning apple trees, taking down
the screens,
putting up the storm windows, banking the house—
all these things,
as preparation for the coming cold...

when I am every day all day all body and no mind,
when I am
physically, wholly and completely, in this world
with the birds,
the deer, the sky, the wind, the trees...

when day after day I think of nothing but what the
next chore is,
when I go from clearing woods roads, to sharpening
a chain saw,
to changing the oil in a mower, to stacking wood,
when I am
all body and no mind...

when I am only here and now and nowhere else—
then, and only
then, do I see the crippling power of mind, the curse
of thought,
and I pause and wonder why I so seldom find
this shining moment in the now.