Night again. Clear. No moon. Peace isn’t easy to come by tonight. Dog barks. The wild cats are tame enough, by night at least, to share space on the deck with me. More barking, this time from down in the valley.

I see new growth appearing on the old Christmas tree, released to the forest before I moved here. It does not precisely thrive in this oak and hickory forest but it does grow. Considering that most Christmas trees never get a second chance, that is something.

A frog, two locusts, a goose questioning softly, perhaps saying "good night." Traffic in the distance, a jet. A creak and a crack that could be an animal step on the dry leaves or...simply something falling from a tree.

Odd how the wild cats seek my company at night. Raggedy ears, he of the ears shredded in a dozen places or more, preens on the step. His coat is flea-bitten and looks like a bad haircut. One of last year’s kittens, still playful, seeks the moths and the locusts but is wary of me.
Calm and still, early on a spring night.

Time: After dark. The sky is perhaps, just perhaps, one shade paler than full night. It is quiet. No birds sing. No breeze rustles the leaves. In the distance, a single frog croaks its tune.

My ears grasp at something. Is it only my imaginings of distant sounds or is there something there? There. The honk of a single goose announcing he is settling down for the night on the pond half a mile away. A moth fritters at the light, casting a shadow. A few lights pierce the dark, no larger than the stars overhead. The only sound is my pen scratching across paper.

Overhead, the dipper empties stars into the black of the cosmos, pouring light into the dark for eon upon eon, since before humans named it thus.

--

Little sounds scratch the surface of the greater silence, the silence no one can hear, the silence no sound can disturb. Perhaps the trees understand this silence, a little. The rocks know it.
From great silence I came and into great silence I will go.

Sound lasts for only a moment. In the silence, sound is an aberration between silences. Silence awaits my return.

Does the knowing of sound change the silence? Is to silence returned different from the unknowing silence of before? Does the memory of sound forever change the silence that follows? I have no answers. There is only silence.

Fresh air and bright sun. A puff of clouds, flits of yellow rumps. A breeze.

Leaves dapple and dance, pale green ovals. A million, perhaps more.

Birds scold, dancing between the trees like leaves given flight.

Vultures dance in the air, above it all.

---

Humans make a lot of noise.
a 2-seater plane
shouts at paintball
A jet in the distance
Always there are planes.
shouts.

Intrusions.

Rock music pulses from over on the ski slopes. An all-day concert is in progress.

I head birdsong only in between the rock music, notes of other songs that only I am hearing.

The leave dance in the breeze.


Jays scold

Fog and the chill of the damp.

Thoughts of the day intrude, too.

---
"orange" start, bay-breasted warbler, red-eyed vireo, a wavelet of warblers,
Clouds and the air freshens

Phoebe, dove, robin, wren, vireo
moist air, cloudy with fog
Bird song, the music of the forest,
a layer of sound atop the silent trees

The trees have seen it all.
They stand silent, as though to say,
let the little ones sing and die.
let the flowers bloom and wither.
Still, we stand.

Chestnut-sided warbler, titmouse, wood thrush.

The woods are newly green and bright with it.
Sky is haxed with moisture.
Colors of day dim, then fade.
Evening.

Warblers in the treetops still feel the sun's kiss. Not me.
Warblers race by me, don't stop.
I don't know who they are.
They fly. I don't.