I sit at night long into dark, listening to the night sounds that says all is not quiet in the woods behind the house. There’s a hooty owl nearby, and tom cats roaming free. An occasional screech disturbs my reading, and from time to time a dog barks, but mostly all is as it always is, just nighttime in the woods.

My kitchen window is the door
Into another world
A world of birdsong and what’s more
A world quite deeply squirreled
Sometimes at night in deepest dark
When lit by silver moon
I hear my neighbor’s hound dog bark
He likes not that raccoon
Some distance off a tom meows
He wanders, like my verse
A sound that sets off hound dog growls
But silence can be worse
All is quiet late at night
The kitchen dark and still
The birds sit waiting for the light
To sit upon my sill
Where nuts and raisins I will spread
Just as the sky turns gray
And wakes each little sleepy head
To start another day