I strain my ears, <br />greedy <br />for each delicate note, <br />for each pianissimo dolce espressivo trill, <br />spilling on to slowly gilding branches <br />and spreading through the celebration <br />of greens and browns and greys <br />with morning blue <br />selectively filtering through <br />one or two patterned, celestial windows <br />and many dazzling, ceiling peepholes. <br /> <br />Avidly I savour each phrase of the spontaneous symphony - <br />an extravaganza, <br />praising the glory of the new day’s dawning - <br />and I welcome <br />the soft canine injunctions <br />from far off furry throats <br />and an impromptu crescendo moderato of railroad clicketty-clicks <br />that fades into the distant highway swoosh of tyres <br />and engines’ low, low rumble - <br /> <br />for all this <br />enhances the counterpoint of the little musicians <br />bursting beauty <br />into forest foreground. <br /> <br />As my hearing heightens, <br />the tentative morning litany of waking crickets swells the 3-D outpouring. <br /> <br />Symphonic movement blends into the next <br />and I lose myself <br />in every perfect tone and semi-tone, <br />in the sunshine-and-shadow flow from note to note, <br />in the echoes, the contrasts, the ebb and <br />flow of choral twitters, <br />the sparkling solos blossoming from quiet corners - <br /> <br />and my anxiety-rigid shoulders dropp - <br />and the closing cadence of the dawn chorus <br />seeps <br />deep <br />into the marrow <br />of my bones <br />as I absorb <br />the first inflections <br />of the next musical offering - <br />a gentle madrigal in honour of <br />the full-blown day. <br /> <br />(27 September 2000)<br /><br />Diana van den Berg<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dawn-symphony-on-a-spring-morning/
