Spring wind meets beech tree sitting on a rise by the marsh,

Desiccated leaves, rattle by the thousands,

Sounding like a distant round of applause at some great Broadway show,

Or a fast-approaching summer rain shower, racing towards me.

The creak of a dead pine tree leaning overhead,

Small songbirds busy themselves beneath the greenbriers,

Flitting up dead leaves,

Their frantic footfalls a pitter patter of beginning rainfall.

A crow caws and wheels away to my left,

As a woodpecker reaches deep into a beech tree,

A thonk thonk thonk echoing in the distance,

While a red winged blackbird incessantly chirps nearby.

Water birds’ songs dissonant in the distance,

The gruff croak of a blue heron,

And the syncopated quack of Canada geese,

Headed north for the summer.

After a time, I only hear my own silence.

The slowing of my heartbeat.

The stillness of my breath.

Gratitude at remembering this way of being,

as stillness returns to my noisy inner mindscape.