by Stuart Leopold

Created on: June 25, 2009

Dark clouds obscured the sky, ensuring that the sun would not warm my tiny portion of the world this day. The rain, steady and insistent, beat a steady tattoo against the metal vent on the roof above my kitchen.The sound, a tin drumming, would have put some people off, but to me it was comforting. The steady rain was keeping a beat to some esoteric song of nature and it resonated within me somehow.

I watched as the wind gently moved the branches of the spindly, skinny old baby pine tree that was just outside of my kitchen window. The ends of the branches moved in sync to the wind that encouraged them to gesture to me as I gazed through that large pane of glass. The only color of the day was the rich, deep green of the pine needles that wiggled like tendril fingers, every time the wind blew

There were no birds to be heard this day. They chose to take shelter in the full branches of the grand maple trees that line my backyard. Safe from predators, they stayed huddled in their nests, secure within the thick leaved branches of these grand trees, their young huddled around them, they waited for the rain to cease. Once the rain subsided they could leave their homes and forage for food for their new, spring-born, young ones. Instinctively they knew that after the rain, rich, fat worms would be ripe for the picking as they rose from the sodden ground to warm themselves in the sun.

I took a deep breath and smelled the ozone-rich air. It was cleansing, purifying and enriching as I drew it deeply ino my lungs as i stood at my open door. The colors, the rain, the smells renewed me, enriched me and revived my weary spirit.

The rich panoply of colors, sounds and smells around me, although brilliant in their wondrous beauty, were but hollow, shallow things, for you were not there, beside me, to share the amazing bounty of that which played out before me.

What good is all of this without you? At times like this I am bereft. I miss you so deeply that my very core cries out for you, my muse, my love. You are my joys for today and my promise and hopes for tomorrow.

I look for you within the sounds, sights and aromas of nature and I know you are there. How could you not be?

Learn more about this author, Stuart Leopold.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.