Day’s end, Year’s end.  Frostfall, Lightfall, the remorseless, inevitable Fall…

Communing with Wendell, walking the deepening woods,

Breathing purposefully, facing the darkening,

seeking gracefulness…like him, practicing a resurrection… 

“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound…

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things…”  (Wendell Berry, Collected Poems 1957-1982)

Spring

The great Elk rule the forest, but prefer the western rise; my intrusions tolerated with benign amusement. 

Their congregation on the stream bank above me sensed, rather than seen.  I am between them and the water.  

The request for my removal is reserved, restrained…but resolute. My response is unhurried, but rapid, respectful…reverential…

Summer

Mountain Cedar has a stronghold on the meadow’s south rise; the pines and firs give way.  

It is the nursery, the cedar’s broad skirts providing home and hearth for the doe and her fawns. 

A private, familial moment; I stay in the meadow, will come again in the Fall…

Fall

A singular Ponderosa, tall and strong, a proud visage, the great keep on the small rise mid-meadow. 

It is home for a Sandhill pair; they return every year…find their castle intact, dominion secure.  

An ungainly, angular countenance on foot, a simple elegance while on wing, their lazy circles congruent with the autumnal pace of the day… 

Winter

Last sun is passing into first twilight on the water’s surface; the stream’s wintersong different, perhaps the ice-fringed bank? 

The heron, a statue at water’s edge, her day over.  

The owl, a silent shadow, gliding into the start of hers.

The winter calm intensifying with the growing twilight…

When I lie down, I will sleep the night through…