Linda Pastan: "In This Season of Waiting"

Under certain conditions,
when the moon in the western sky
seems frozen there, for instance

even as the sun is rising in the east,
so that soon two sides of the coin
will be facing each other;

or when the snow
which is a stranger here
fills our trees with its cold flowers;

when the single
bluejay at the feeder
is so still

it could be enameled there,
then the earth becomes an emblem
for whatever we believe.

"In This Season of Waiting" by Linda Pastan, from Heroes in Disguise. © W. W. Norton and Company, 1991.  

Photography credit: "Why the Sun Follows the Moon," by Native American Encyclopedia (originally color).