Before Sunset

I found a Stellar's jay feather smaller than my little finger tonight. It was stuck to a mint leaf in the garden.

Later, I took a walk in the woods (the air, only a 1/2 mile away, so different, so green) and almost tripped over two Pileated Woodpeckers, an adult and a baby, who were flushed out by my footsteps, and flew upwards into a Douglas fir, then walked up the bark, making nearly indiscernible sounds.

A little farther up the path I met a couple who were in search of the baby owls, but without luck. They walked with their heads tilted up, each with one ear cocked to the side, listening.

Six runners passed me, in the still and humid air.

I realized, having walked this inner-woods path for years, that I perceive the path musically, with a kind of classical melody, each twist around a fallen fir an arpeggio, my footsteps on the peaty earth: andante. I go uphill at a legato pace. During nesting season, the robins pipe a staccato alarm. And then there is the metronome of my heart, speeding up, slowing down. All of it: music. Moss music, fern music, maple music.