Presence of the Divine

            for Reverend Fabio Garzon

It is like the first time I chanced upon a radiant 
cluster of pink blossoms emerging from a prickly 
hedgehog thriving on the slope of a mountain; 
 
or the seemingly cold gray limestone of a glacier
that cracked open for the royal blue gentians,
white cups of the avens, yellow bells of the cowslip; 
 
or flitting about the blooms of a ninebark bush
growing wild on Turnbull Island, so many monarchs,
admirals, skippers, and swallowtails;  

or the site of two burrowing owls, heads gyrating,
yellow eyes frowning beneath thin white eyebrows;
or the wail of loons wafting across still waters; 
 
or the way a rainbow appears in a misty rain;
or how he made Mother and me feel
in the unfamiliar church that Easter morning.