Dusk has come.
I walk and
Rabbits the color of forgotten hay
Dart into the undergrowth
The soundless doe and her fawn
Slip into the slender shadows
Of the copse
That keeps the river
Cool and dark
The waters slow to a whisper.
Birds on the outer branches
Of this secret place
Silence themselves
As my footfall sends
A shiver through the earth.
The fish feel the echo
Rippling through water.
A fox slips through the grass
And the geese step into
The cool dew of day's end.
Everything disappears
Into the shelter of trees.
In the distance, a dog barks.
A baby cries.
I stand still, stand back,
Hold my breath
And wait for silence
To carry off these voices.
The retreating thunder
Of my steps
Is the last sound
Before darkness claims
The sleeping universe
That casts me back out
Onto the unlit street.
I discovered this week that the word copse comes from a Latin word meaning to cut. So a copse is a small wood grown for the purpose of cutting. How and why this brought my thoughts to the works of Margaret Wise Brown and her bedtime stories for children--Goodnight, Moon, A Child's Good Night Book, The Big Red Barn, The Sleepy Book, Wait 'Til the Moon is Full, The Sleepy Little Lion--that have a lovely way of placing the sleepy child in a wonderful, settled, sleeping world where all is well, I don't know. I like to walk in the evening just as it seems the world is going to sleep. Except that I often feel like a heavy, oafish intruder as I move along. Quite the opposite of all those wonderfully assuring things I used to read to my daughter. I don't know.
Sandy Carlson Social