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 This remnant of wild down the street
offers casually by day manifold delights to draw me in—
Morning dew encrusting spider’s tracery, bringing this mid-air magic into view, Bursting green strung on waking Indian Plum, ignoring groundhog, spreading word of spring, Rays slipping between centennial big-leaf trunks touching a fern of ancient lineage, Drifting fog retreating for a moment’s glimpse of golden leaves distilling autumn’s light, The tumbling notes of tiny stream and winter wren, staccato scolding squirrel and downy’s tap, the wind, which uses different voice in leaf and fir, The pungent fragrance of the earthworm’s lair. But… the familiar is transformed by winter’s moon at full— Fern fronds gleam against the inky shade, their rhythm stark along the rising bank, Bare maple branches search the higher air tracing dark-on-dark patterns on the sky, The trail beneath my feet is soft with loam, trapping a hush that active day dispels, I’m bathed in light that adds my drifting form to silvery ghosts of patient snag and log, A withered leaf drifts to a lower branch, a miniature knight shoulders past a twig —the only sounds to break the breathless spell. —This vestige of forests past casts in chaste moonlight a thrill I receive in silent awe. Written by Judith Starbuck after a walk in Madrona Woods under the February full moon in 2000 |
