What I saw ( and what saw me )walking this early afternoon on a most unusually warm autumn afternoon in Minneapolis just off Lyndale

Two turtles
A white tailed deer, looking at me
A Gartner snake swirl and stop in the dry leaves
 a Robin
Inside the onyx eye of the Gartner snake, glossy, murky, but a portal
A man dressed in bright orange shirt, watching me watch the snake, then kneeling beside me to watch beside me
Other humans watching the water closely
A school of teeny tiny fish near the sunny surface, en mase, a giant fist
One of those teeny black fish jumping out with all the arc and grace of a dolphin, one one millionth it's size
The manifestation of footsteps
Two upward climbing black spotted woodpeckers, bearing no resemblance to woody
A lone baby duck, mid lake, encased in its on water ring. Rippling out and out and out until it became a wave
Many sleeping ducks
The white tailed deer running along the fence
A red dragon fly
Mid aged women wearing work out gear and new tennis shoes
A businessman on a bench in the sun, texting, smiling, earphones on
A baby Robin
Back to that baby duck, perhaps  the  most moving thing of all and how that baby ring was so perfectly circular in the middle of the lake, a perfection we cannot replicate but at times try so hard that we miss it when it shows itself so purely and vulnerable asking nothing of us, not even ever
My other younger self missing all of this, too afraid to make eye contact with the unknown
My thirty year old self running quickly through all this, too fast to see this
All of this seeing me
My love
My soft edges
And yours
A duck waddle onto the dock. Hop off the dock, waddle toward me, smile, quack and waddle away back to the dock upon which he hopped before jumping back into the water
Really seeing a duck waddle for the first time
A man with a professional looking camera
Stillness
Endless gifts given when we stop and be, not so much as waiting, but receiving
My gratitude
The endlessly clear rooted path my breath both carves and follows before me, behind and beneath me
And how the breath is root and tunnel and the portal to all things
The endearment of my striving thoughts
My truth
An airplane that I mistake for an egrit
A group of autistic kids crossing the wooden bridge over water, passing me mid bridge
A gnat in my peripheral vision, too close
The wings of something large
And two bluebirds