Observations beneath the canopy—finding stillness, endurance, and unjudged presence among trees, seasons, and open ground.
Sunrise in the fall
Is a beautiful thing to see.
The blue sky rises tall
With the promise of all that is to be.
The air is crisp and cool
The colors are vibrant and bright.
The sun glimmers as a jewel
It is wonderous sight.
The fall is a time of transition.
We move from the heat of summer
To a colder air condition
And a change of pace like a little drummer.
The fall is to me the very best season
I like it the most, for no special reason.
They flutter through the canopy with care,
To gather moss and twigs from branch and ground;
Then lift their fragile treasures through the air,
Where patient hands and quiet skill are found.
These expert craftsmen shape a home from scratch,
And weave the scattered forest into form;
A cradle where the hidden brood may hatch,
Secured against the bitter wind and storm.
Yet safe within the sanctuary’s bound,
The growing wings prepare to take the sky;
Until at last, above the empty ground,
The fledglings leave the woven boughs and fly.
The cycle turns as seasons disappear:
A house rebuilt with patient love each year.
They arrive in the quietest boxes,
small breaths held against the dark,
wild eyes counting the shadows of a world
that has not been kind.
To reach a hand into the cage
is to look into a mirror of fractured light—
here is the trembling, the hidden music,
the fierce, silent defense of the small.
In learning the language of their fear,
the heavy coat of the perimeter begins to slip.
We tend to the forgotten, the bottle-fed infants,
the ones who only know how to hide.
And in the side-by-side labor of the healing,
an ancient blueprint shifts.
For to worry over a heartbeat that is not your own,
to let your thoughts anchor in another’s survival,
is to step out of the house with one chair.
The world calls it a soft thing, a fragile habit,
to bend your back for the broken and the small.
But there is a fierce iron in the vulnerability,
a structural majesty in choosing to ache
for a life that cannot offer you a resume or a name.
It is not weakness to stand uncovered before their need;
it is the heavy masonry of the soul,
the quiet architecture of a heart that refuses to close.
We scooped inside the boxes to save the discarded,
only to find the walls of our own winter melting.
They do not ask for the vast stars of the intellect;
they ask only for the steady certainty of now.
And in the touch of a small, mended creature,
the rescuer is redrawn.
Held in the curve of an unburdened hour,
the soul remembers how to be found.
I admit the yardwork never suited my hand;
Mowing the lawn is about all the labor I muster.
I resent the sharp edge of the trimmer and shears,
So I planted the saplings together, a solitary cluster.
I delayed the cutting as long as the seasons allowed,
Watching the green shoots tangle, cross borders, and mingle.
Some reached far above me, casting a shadowy wall,
Until intricate branches knit tight, woven and single.
The longer I wait, the more their living combines,
Growing taller and wider, a dense, undisciplined frame.
They interlace limbs in the quiet, tangled and wild,
Leaving no path to follow, no simple direction to name.
At last the cold steel comes out with a dreaded report,
As I step to the thicket and measure the boundary line—
Attempting to salvage the yard with a hesitant cut, Reclaiming the borders from nature’s unruly design.
Living in the mountains, high and serene,
Is my quiet escape from the city’s harsh glare,
And the blinding white light where the ocean waves lean.
I seek the deep calm where the timber stands tall,
The cool of the shade where the shadow-lines fold,
Where the birds guard the canopy, watchful and small,
And the wild things move softly through mosses and cold.
It is quiet up here on the ridge of the earth;
The steepness demands that a traveler go slow.
No rushing, no metrics of status or worth—
The hills hold the floor, and we follow their flow.
I have fallen in love with the winding contour,
The small, scattered towns tucked in valleys below,
Where the mist settles low like an unwritten cure,
And the breeze takes the weight that the daylight bestowed.
The slowing of life in the mountain’s embrace
Clears the noise of the world from the mind’s open space;
Here, a man is allowed to establish his pace,
And look out at the earth with a peace on his face.
Courtney Bosworth's Blog 