A Quiet Witness
No path led through the wooded glade,
Just hints the rain and time had made.
The hush was deep, not fully still —
A breathless sound the trees would spill.
The leaves, they whispered, soft and low,
As distant waters pulsed their flow.
Barefoot, I walked the brook’s cold bed,
With moss and mist around me spread.
No goal I chased, no prize in sight —
Perhaps the gleam of silver light,
That breaks through clouds with breath held tight,
Or silence dressed in morning white.
Then faintly — not abrupt, but near —
A waterfall I came to hear.
It called as if it’d always been,
Awaiting me to tune it in.
The bracken bowed, the beech trees swayed,
The brook climbed higher as I wade.
And then I saw — across the stream,
A log, like something from a dream.
Dark, waterlogged, a velvet shroud,
With foaming waves, that laughed aloud.
Behind it, veils of tumbling white
Fell ghostlike in the filtered light.
I placed my tripod in the stream,
Still half adrift within a dream.
Then set my bag upon a stone,
And turned — and found I was not alone.
A robin, on the trunk I saw, its breast a flame —
Its gaze so keen, a flicker lit in woodland green.
It seemed unreal, a tale retold,
A spark of myth with feathers bold.
It watched me calmly, head askew,
As if to say, “What’s wrong with you?”
Perhaps it thought, “This human fool,
Barefoot and cold, a walking tool!”
But something shifted in that space,
A stillness held in time and place.
I lost all thought of frame and light,
And simply breathed — the moment right.
Then softly, as the shutter clicked,
A note was played, both clear and strict.
A reverent sound, both small and grand,
Like touching grace with a trembling hand.
The robin left without a sound,
Its wings a whisper all around.
Yet what it left I can’t unsee —
A quiet held inside of me.
Not just the frame, not just the shot,
But something deeper, I had caught.
A truth the wild is slow to show:
Its grace is found
In letting go.