Thoughts Listening to Nature

this morning in Terry, Montana

the snow didn’t arrive loudly.

it came the way truth does

without asking permission.

the world softened overnight.

fences blurred into suggestions.

roads forgot where they were going.

even time slowed its step,

as if it didn’t want to disturb

what had settled here.

snow has a way of erasing the unnecessary.

it doesn’t argue.

it doesn’t explain.

it just covers

and somehow, in covering everything,

reveals what matters.

i stood still long enough

to hear the quiet working.

the kind of quiet that isn’t empty,

but full

full of breath,

full of pause,

full of Montana being exactly what it is.

three moments.

one morning.

Happy birthday to Lyudmila Pavlichenko (born July 12, 1916), Soviet sniper in World War II, with 309 confirmed kills.