Susie Sweetland Garay’s most recent poem to appear here was “The Trees” (August 2014) 

Listening
By Susie Sweetland Garay

I watch two electric blue dragonflies
frolic near a bush full of magenta berries
next to where I sit on the damp grass
one stops for a while
and before he leaves
I study the patterns in his
iridescent wings.

Don’t run from distraction he tells me,
embrace the surprising unknowns.
Play.

For me
it comes in bits and pieces
and required a lot of rearranging.

I walk outside to ask
the land what she would like to tell me,
what I need to know,
on a misty morning when water
seems to float in the air

and as I walk my eye immediately goes to
a gloriously enormous slug in shades
of ochre and grey with a
mountain range
of ridges on
his back.

He travels slowly
but his movement is steady
and I have no doubt that he will get where
he is going.

The sun is warm on my back.
I hear bees buzzing nearby and

I don’t know if the land is listening
but I say thank you just in case.