Easily missed seasons

I live in places where the seasons and their signs

Are not so marked.  They come and leave on quiet tip-toes.

Perhaps the thorn-tree straightens a little when spring’s declared

The scrub bush droops a bit when winter’s fangs are bared

And when autumn comes the purple-flowered, wild growing vines

Curl their leaves and learn to throw some different shadows.

It’s easy to miss the changing slant of the light

The poignant outburst of twilight is easily missed.

The shortening or the lengthening of the daylight hours

Autumn winking at me on the merry faces of small grassflowers

And it’s easy to forget the birds overhead on their long flight

Their chevrons woven into the clouds passing unnoticed.

I live in places where each thing comes and goes

Its footfalls muffled by loose sands or short grasses

Its soundless tracks might bend the blades for a minute or two

And then they spring back, as grasses will always do

The wind casually musses the sands back into the hollows,

Back to pristine like nothing has passed.  Or ever passes.

And it’s easy to miss all those who pass with a step that’s light

The cricket leaps and lizard feet are easy to miss.

And who’d want to track reptile moves on midsummer sand

When there are other, more flamboyant feet to understand?

Much easier to follow the eagle, forget the beetle’s flight

Too ungainly and irksome to merit a minute’s analysis.

I live in places where each thing knows to slink,

Flash past me fast and quiet, out of my range

Way out of my line of vision or attention span.

They leave it totally up to me to look when I can

And in that split second make up my mind, not stop to think

If I’ll let it pass, or run out and just feel the change.