Farewell, For The Nonce

I will miss - who won't?
the early morning sun
streaming through our bedroom windows
warming our expectations for the day
as we lie there, listening to the birdsong
themselves blissfully lifting notes to the sky
heralding each new day.

I will miss the presence of
robins, hummingbirds, goldfinches, cardinals
though we'll still see woodpeckers,
chickadees, nuthatches and crows in
the frozen, snow-packed forests about us.
Gone will be the blackbirds, the herons,
but we anticipate great solemn roosting owls
in the crooks of great pines in our ravine.

Gone, the daisies, yarrow, cattails, trailing lotus,
black-eyed Susan, Vipers bugloss, Queen Anne's Lace
not to mention asters, goldenrod, henbane and
all those other woodland flowering plants
along with the proliferation of saucy ferns
and the varied-coloured mushrooms that
pop up so mysteriously, spring and fall.

No longer will we see for the space of long
winter months, fields of corn, rye, oats
and barley. Herds of cattle, horses, neat barns and silos
all closed up, cloistered as though in a nunnery.
We will no longer hasten to mow our summer lawns;
linger, our eyes enraptured by nature's gifts to us
in our summer gardens of hydrangea,
roses, astilbe, peonies and lilac.

Disappeared, all. Back into the soil from
whence they sprang, (with a little bit of nurturing
at the hands of all us summer-gleeful gardeners).