The Ways of Nature

 by Ceri Marriott
 
Shrouded in cloud, the trees stand like silent ghosts,
Guardians of this naked land,
And rain falls heavily, persistently
To the ground, soaking through the earth beneath,
Plants and grass sodden to the core.
 
Elsewhere a mist hovers a few feet above the ground,
A swirling whiteness swathing the early morning
So that trunks seem split in two,
With branches suspended in the air.
A sudden burst of sun diffuses through the mist
In a faint, translucent yellow,
Portent of a finer day to come.
 
In the hazy sun before the world begins to wake,
A deer ventures from the fields into a meadow overgrown and neglected,
Sheltered by the long grass and the dense, entangled bushes
Around the drying pond.