The quiet descends

I noticed it today when I went out walking. Just a lonely crow, some honking geese. No songbirds. No insects. The wind was nothing more than a current of lazily flowing air. The trees were still. There was this hush. I think we don’t quite realize the soundtrack created by the lives of innumerable small things in the warmer months. And then they go and there’s a quiet that the humans can’t quite dispel. A motorcycle zoomed by, last days of freedom style, and still I heard the power in the hawk’s wings overhead as it left its branch to find a spot further away. My feet through the crunchy leaves. The scamper of a squirrel. What’s left is exposed in all this quiet, and it’s just beginning. I like it. It feels a bit like an invitation to join in the long rest of winter. Soothes the soul some.