The Cadence in the Green

"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems."

-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"



Lazy musings by the stream...
I take in all the forest sounds.
The soothing breeze washes over my face;
it moves like water,
as I,
I calmly lean against an ancient tree,
all in solitude,
while the stream softly lulls me to sleep
with its peaceful lullaby,
its unceasing, never increasing lapping,
bouncing and hopping over rocks and drops:
white noice.

Kept warm by the rays of the golden sun,
glistening through a patchwork green,
the natural whicker basket that is the treetops.
I close my eyes,
viewing only the pinks of my eyelids,
and I could swear
that I hear a music,
a humming,
borne upon the breeze,
a murmered cadence in the green.
She is calling,
but I know not who.

I am not asleep,
but not strictly dreaming.
I am somewhere else,
not transportaed to the third heaven,
not alighted upon the enlightened heights of nirvana,
no.
I am nowhere.

The esctasy of it!
The sheer, wordless joy,
what wondrous Absence have I now found?
There is nothing,
and I am nothing.
All is at ease.
And from the stillness,
there arises once more,
that musical muttering,
a chanted song.
And I listen.

There,
whispered in my ear,
the song.
She sings to me the words to some unwritten poem,
some glorious yet-unpenned tome.
I take it in in delight.
She is filling my head with all the words,
that wshipered music in my ear,
borne upon the breeze,
the cadence in the green.

I smile,
I open my eyes,
and begin to write.



-D.B.