South for the Winter
by Sara Setzer
Oregon City, OR
A bird soars on the music of the wind.
The haunting melody carries it low,
skimming the surface of a crystal lake.
The rippling mirror reflecting a warped storm.
Dark, ominous clouds.
Angry, they roll menacingly above.
Drums of thunder sound.
Beating out a booming bass to the wind’s flowing melody.
A foreboding harmony trickles into nature’s orchestra;
a stray breeze, whistling through the needles of an evergreen forest.
The world is still.
Spreading its wings to catch a rising current,
the bird glides onward and upward over a pristine, untouched landscape.
Terrain shadowed by the approaching charcoal front.
A creature laps from the living glass below, one who will not go south for the winter.
Freezing mist creeps along the ground brush, trapping all it encounters in its frigid claws.
Tilting, the bird brushes one tiny wing along the belly of a great, swirling gray beast.
A northwest storm.
