Morning songs

It's been a Mary Oliver kind of morning, the kind she described in her poem "Morning":

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her,
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.

My morning pages today--those "roll over and write as soon as you wake up" writing practice pages that Natalie Goldberg recommends--today had become about commitment. Goldberg wrote in Wild Mind that committing to a writing practice allows you to go deeper--into writing, into life. I thought about the way a commitment to a career, a family, a time of crisis seems to bring out the best in us because the small things fall into place. Otherwise they can become fritterings that pull down the whole life. That happened to a tree up the street a few weeks ago. It was a very tall tree with lots of branches filled with healthy green leaves. We appreciated its shade while waiting for the bus to work these hot days. It had massive roots that seemed to rest mostly above ground; the tree slanted across the busy street. We had a long drought, like most of the country, then a day of very heavy rains. That night, in perfect stillness, the tree came down, taking power lines with it. I could only guess that the water weighed down the branches so much they pulled the tree out.

I went outside after writing and listened to the cicadas humming in the trees. The sound rose in front of me, then to the left, then to the right... I closed my eyes and it seemed their music was orchestrated, the groups taking turns raising their sound to a crescendo, then down softly, pianissimo, turning the lead over to the other sections... When I finally opened my eyes I was seeing differently. I got my camera and went slowly from image to image. It struck me that just being present is a commitment, and maybe it's the kind the trees make. Requires no degree, no money, no Blackberry.