I don’t have anything to say about the lake,
how its tiny wavelets move in the evening
like a million ping pong balls rolling across an
empty supermarket parking lot.

I don’t have a comment either about the play
of last salmon-colored beams of sunlight
that seem to bend over these implacable mountains
and stain the water on the far shore.

I maintain no interest in discussing the quarreling larks
(or flycatchers or killdeer…)
shouting epithets to each other from hidden lairs
in the trees by the shore.

There is nothing to report about the trees either
except for the sound their hundred thousand leaves
make applauding the wind.

I am ready to recognize the wind, however,
even applaud it myself as it runs its combs through my hair,
and, most important, drives all the blasted mosquitoes
down the slope and into the trees
where there are a thousand open beaks
grateful for their bedtime snack.

JD Frey -- August 26, 2006