Twilight deepening:

Past the soft tones of the wind chimes

A late flying hawk calls out unseen,

Its voice borne off to the northeast,

Diminishing into the rising night.

Further on, walking away from the twilight,

Some frogs in the soggy meadow

Sing cheerily to the lowering sky

And in the west beyond the jagged fir hills

Still persists a trace of fading light

A sweep of turquoise beneath the purple black

Brow of clouds.

Beyond the stiff and spiky branches of the cottonwoods

Half illuminated January moon risen and

Briefly free, sheds pure and silver light,

Reflected in myriad puddles and clinging droplets.

A world of grey and darker grey and black

Of the westerly breeze sounding like rushing water

In the lofty firs mingled with the purling

Of the tumbling creek.

With moonlight now gone

All that remains is the sweet resinous scent of wood smoke

Drifting.

Walking further, to where the huge firs rise from a carpet

Of the deepest greenest moss, pure and soft,

But now in total darkness it is a bottomless abyss

And the rain returns, pattering tentatively at first,

Then pelting in the rising wind which washes

In rolling waves through the fir boughs, high overhead,

Like surf upon the belly of the scudding clouds.

The happy frogs sing.