"the forest is silent today..."

the forest is silent today under the hush of
last night's storm, trees sleep long beneath heavy
quilts of pillowed white stillness and the sigh of
winter breathing through the somber steel of mid-December

i tiptoe softly not to wake the slumbering, weary from
a night of arched branches straining against the
buffeting threat of wind and sleet and what could
not be seen between the silence just before another gust

beneath my feet are the footprints of other visitors
snowshoe hare and something smaller than a bear but
larger than a door mouse leaving nothing but the brush
of tail against an untouched drift of white along
a fallen log

and then i see it in the distance a glimmer of blue
woven through the shades of gray and white like ribbon
on a virgin's sleeping gown floating softly as she
breathes a sigh of wonder just above her hope-filled dreams

it is the remnants of a sparrow's nest lingering high above
the forest floor where leaves have fallen and the sounds
of summer sleep a cradle for nestlings now wintering far
from the silence of this place where their mother's
gathered treasures catch my eye and call me deep with
the stillness of the hundred acre woods