I am cocooned in a symphony of sound.

Each melody, specific,

Each accent, amplifed.

 ~

In the distance, a train’s engine rumbles

as it clatters along the tracks,

a low, mournful horn song drifts on the

dense morning air.

~ 

Every bird song is distinct –

Twitters and squeaks

Chatters and winnows

Some percussive

Others rhythmic:

A dawn chorus.

The clouds push it down to my waiting ears,

rather than allowing it to escape upwards.

 ~

The farm is my chamber

for a musical festival

where I am surrounded,

Delighted.

 ~

I shiver and smile

and pull my jacket close around me

the mist falling across my face.

The cottonwood in the distance

a ghost,

black and skeletal.

The moon arrives each afternoon

no sooner than it left, it seems…

The hours of weakened sunlight zoom by

as if being chased by

some great winter beast.

The rays hide to the south,

lurking behind storms and clouds…

All the earth

begins to still and slide into rest,

trees quietly shedding as

the air thickens with the coming

of dark

and cold.

Life is telling us to slow…

to put aside busyness and

curl up by the fire with a dog.

Like the trees, storing up energy for spring,

our bodies cannot fight

the natural order of things.

We are merely a dash

on the Great Timeline of the earth’s rotation –

decades

and millinnea

and eons of nature’s demand,

for she knows best.

And so we rest.