This morning over tea, Pam talked about improvisation.  About moving from one place to another unexpectedly, taking a fresh perspective, sitting where you don’t usually sit, walking in a different pathway around the house, outside of the house, driving a different route.

Improvisation is, of course, my favorite subject.  As I started to write this, I improvised by taking my camera outside and capturing the flowers that are blooming in my summer garden.  Yesterday, when I rode the lovely Sanne (the Friesian whose name means Lily, even though he is a boy), I improvised with halts and breathing, and conscious softening.  It felt like a meditation conversation between our two bodies and breaths.

Today, this poem was in my inbox.  It seems a perfect invitation for the day, for a life.

All the Hemispheres
by Hafiz

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.