The youngest sassafras branches are green, like rose stems.

A broad-winged hawk lands on the hydro tower like one of the gods of voltage.

A cooper’s hawk and kestrel round out the day’s raptures.

Also came across a stand of young honey locust trees, like dancing partners dipping and swaying in the wind.

Along a path of reeds the whispers are like the voices of many lives in parallel universes.

Yesterday I found a dying mantis on the path, with a day moon in one eye.

Fall is falling today like an adagio only I can hear.

As though a Van Gogh of the wind had painted a brush dipped in sunflowers across the forest.

A female cardinal separates her shadow from her shade and turns up in neither.

When a cardinal and a blue jay cross the same path at the same instant, the discernment of truth cuts through the silence of beauty.