transparent with rain

.

The man of earth abides in the flow.
The ground moves beneath him, and he knows
it moves. His house is his vessel, afloat
only for a while. He moves, willing,
through a thousand phases of the sun,
changing as the day changes, and the year.

His mind is like the dirt, lightened
by bloom, weighted by rain.
The fragment of the earth
that is now me is only on its way
through me. It is on its way
from having been a tree,
a school of fish, a terrapin,
a flock of birds. It will pass
through all those forms again.


–Wendell Berry

.
Diphylleia grayi, also known as the skeleton flower.
The petals turn transparent with the rain.
.