Sometimes when I get tired of working at home, I go to school with Zac, sit in his fourth floor office while he’s in class. Windows line one wall of his office, three fat panes overlooking a parking lot and silver-white hospital. Overlooking sky.
Sometimes when Zac is in class, I sit in his office and watch the sky. I’m supposed to be working, of course: my to-do list stares at me from his desk, poems I’m trying to write, books I’m trying to read. But the sky. This morning: white-out fog. I could barely see across the parking lot, sky enveloping everything. Then downpour rain that blew into the glass, rattled the panes. Fog become concrete. Then white clouds moved in, and between them, glimpses of sun, sunlight, blue streaks. A jay flew from the trees past the glass. A flock of gulls in their V. Then dark clouds layering the sky in swathes of gray: lighter, then dark, white, black. Movement, always, toward the lake.
Sometimes, the sky a symphony of change. Sometimes I watch it.
There’s a story about Jane Hirshfield trying to write the history of Buddhism, and finally landing on this haiku:
Everything changes,
everything is connected,
pay attention.
The lesson of the sky: pay attention. Everything changes, is connected.
Sometimes, I watch the sky from Zac’s fourth floor window and remember this.
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Planet of the Blind 