A moment

I was sitting at my desk at home just now compiling web usage statistics to include in my department monthly report. (My work life is a nonstop run of glamour and excitement such as this.) I happened to look out the window to see a very fine spider web being lifted lightly in the breeze. It's a large web and stretches from one tree to another. It's a misty, quiet morning and I am at an angle to see the web from the edge. It wouldn't be visible at all in brighter light or from a different angle. It looks like the lightest of bed sheets hung out on the line to dry. And as I was typing that last sentence a little hummingbird stopped by the window box outside the same window, just for an instant.

I heard Garrison Keillor reading a poem by Mary Oliver on the radio the other day where she talked about the things she saw on a summer afternoon. In it, she said that her role was to be only a witness to these things. That rang true to me.