Tuesday, June 9, 2015

A Book of the Seasons: April, May and June





The star-studded sky,
water reflecting the stars,
the dark land between.

Snow-covered mountains
in the northwest horizon
glisten in the sun.

A still warmer day,
warm, moist rain-smelling west wind,
like a summer’s dream.

Ice goes to the sea.
Now sails the fish hawk overhead,
looking for his prey.

Yesterday is like
a reflection in water.
Ideal inverted.

White-headed eagle
edgewise like a black ripple,
concealed in the sky.


Spring flowers flash out,
Blossoms preceding the leaf
suddenly bloom.

One frog begins then
the whole pond joins in until
all stop together.

A fit place for owls,
thick woods over white spruce swamp
where bog laurel grows.

Shad-bush in blossom
seen afar amid gray twigs
before its own leaves.

We float down river
through the still and hazy air,
the June-like warmth.

Deciduous trees
are now a mist of leaflets
against the dark pines.

Their leaves like flowers
the birches by the railroad
flash yellow on me.

Strong lights and shades now.
It is a day of shadows,
the leaves have so grown.

In the washing breeze
the undersides of leaves flash
new light on the year.

The trembling aspens
offer me a new summer,
fluttering my thoughts.


Crows with ragged wings
noiselessly circle their nest
high in a white pine.

When the darkness comes
do not the stars, like fireflies,
show their light for love?

Sometime we are calmed
like a still lake when there is
not a breath of wind.

The red undersides
of the white lily pads
exposed by the wind.




A Book of the Seasons , by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season, 
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2015

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