The Forest Is Silent For Some Poem by Sonny Rainshine

The forest is silent for some.
In order to hear the subtle arpeggios,
adagios, the animato of woodland animals,
the bisbigliando of breezes
among the pine-needled canopy,
dappling and dimpling the the grass below,
you have to stop being human.

You have to regress to a time
when we stalked the forest
barefooted or in hushed moccasins,
before I-pods, before recorded music,
a time when the tones and rhythms of the wilderness
were thrilling, were enough,
were tender, not rough,
were soothing stuff.

The tempo of forest sounds
is so natural and so ordinary
that many never hear
the tat-tat-tat of the woodpecker
or the silky trembling in the brush
of the garter snake.
It seems tragic,
a renouncing of magic,
that city children
dismiss a walk in the country
with “I’m bored! ”

I count myself among the lucky
in that a parent taught me how to listen
to the ever-changing orchestration
of the woods. Crescendoing
and diminuendoing,
accelerandoing and decrescendoing,
and accented periodically
with pure silence, a serendipity caesura—
the perfect antidote to the cacophony
of the work-a-day world.