Gracious 2012 by Drea Jensen
Receptive, perfect and complete: yet able to amplify the environment around us.
May our integrity help us be surrounded by that which brings spiritual joy.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/gracious-2012-drea-jensen.html

The Gesture
By Mary Oliver

On the dog’s ear, a scrap of filmy stuff
turns out to be
a walking stick, that jade insect, this one scarcely sprung
from the pod of the nest,
not an inch long. I could just see
the eyes, elbows, feet nimble under the long shanks.
I could not imagine it could live
in the brisk world, or where it would live, or how. But
I took it
outside and held it up to the red oak that rises
ninety feet into the air, and it lifted its forward-most
pair of arms
with what in anything worth thinking about would have seemed
a graceful and glad gesture; it caught
onto the bark, it hung on; it rested; it began to climb.