Keep an Open Mind

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

 

 

Blue irises spiral open in slow motion

the silken blades of their standards

and crests, their falls and hefts,

in the morning, in silence, in secret.

 

A dragonfly holds the swaying reed lightly

as a wish.

 

A turtle stretches its yellow-painted neck and head

up from the dark pond to get a look around

with its wide, round, military eyes.

 

Water striders glide across the water

with their long, outstretched symmetrical legs–

they even hop and skate—lighter than Jesus

ever was.

 

Gold-speckled koi move like dreams.

 

I step closer and an unseen frog

dash-plops into the shadowed-shallows—

like a lost prayer.

 

I stand there watching, waiting

for my purpose, for a poem to appear, like

a heron stepping from behind the curtain

of the willow.

 

How do I live consciously

in this vast, ecology of hope?

How do I answer unknown questions

that swim in my soul? How do I wonder

past my feeling lost in the everything that happens

and why, holding on to a reed of my own?

 

A black-spotted-orange-fire-colored-

salamander smoothly slips back under

a decomposing log, but not before

pausing to say: “Keep an open mind.

The answer is in the heron’s unfolding wings.”