Lines Written at Dinosaur Hill Park Overlook

Pleasant Hill, California, November 14, 2008

Today I sit on a hillside overlooking the whole valley where we live.
Across the chasm Mt. Diablo rises and presides,
And everything defers, in fact sits at its feet.

Our valley is green with ten thousand trees,
But let it never be said California has no autumn;
There are yellow, red and gold in the valley,
And thousands of homes mostly hidden in the tree-shade

And but for a few office complexes dwarfed by our Mountain King,
This might be a pasture above the Pamir Valley in Afghanistan
And I some shepherd boy with his flute, flock grazing nearby.
A few apple trees on the slope just below me give credence to this illusion.

I have just sung my heart out to our valley, filling it
With the Name of God, with which it had helped fill me.
It is a great pleasure to feel I can hold this vast bowl,
Ten to fifteen miles from one end to the other and five to ten miles across,
Easily in my arms and embrace it,
As it embraced me half an hour ago
When I climbed this hill and sat down under this tree
And all I had to do was look out.

Oh, Perfection is always here, just beyond ourselves.
To praise God requires no effort,
For Creation itself is a choir ever singing His Praises!

Up here, just a little above the habitations of men,
Its song fills the ears and streams through the body,
Wide and solid as a living river.

 —Max Reif