Two Silences

As the heat hushes the land

I’m in the midst of Summer’s silence, that place where the heat is too much to do many things.

The woods, fields and dale have spent themselves in Spring’s exertion of beauty and fertility. It’s a calm daze like one falls into after a delicious meal. A napish lull hangs in the warming morning sending everything into hiding.

There’s a Winter silence that it reflects, but it holds a different feel. The cold calm is a grace of inability to produce anything, the Sun’s silent quiet is the aftermath from the strain of labor.

Both produce a contemplative grace to let go of the driving need to be productive. A forced Sabbath woven into the rhythm of seasons by loving providence.

Most everything is thinking of water.

The Bees are fighting for the drops hanging off the Rabbit’s bottle.

The Birds make a truce and drink from the bath together as the snakes crawl into the small pond like kids playing at the pool.

The flowers soak in the hose spray as they cling to the last petals of color and the Chipmunks lick the garden leaves they hide within.

Chickens dunk their waddles in their bowls as I splash water on my head as I drag the hose to the struggling Apple and Cherry trees holding on for dear life in the difficult mountain soil.

I’m dreaming of cool rivers and lakes of emerald, copper and sapphire as the air conditioner endlessly hums on day 15 above 90 degrees.

And the silences make everything heard on the mountain, in the grasses and at the feeders and in…the soul.