The Forest Sings, and I Remain Illiterate

took the lily for a final walk before bedtime, down a short path carpeted with last season's light brown pine needles that muffled by heavy footfalls, through a swarm of mosquito-looking flying insects that did not bite or even alight on my exposed skin. I was shaking off the last dew drop when I realized I had entered a hidden world dense with birdsong in a multitude of voices from all around me. The voices never conflicted or drowned out their neighbors. It was auditory harmony touching something deep in my blood memory. I felt primordial, primeval, pristine. The birds themselves were mere shadows darting through the dense undergrowth, around old snags in the early stages of decay, and swooping between the branches drooping in the shadows.