Soft footsteps echo through a starlit night
Leaves rustle underfoot, where a lone rabbit watches
Is the dark freedom born or chances few?
A cricket considers the melancholy.
Or neither? Something new?

An engine rumbles on a road a distance away,
Brittle twigs crunch under four slow wheels.
Waving goodbye, or merry greetings,
or something else, in between?
There! The golden arm of beech leaves dance in a breeze

an appreciation of the moment,
as moments, come to be.
a collection of seconds and fragments
from so many eyes
strung together,  as priceless as pearls
or an unknown prize.

will you see what the world offers in true solitude?
when it thinks you won't see what it can offer to you?
or will you pause, like the deer
to truly observe?
quiet nights, moonbeams,  and lone beech trees.
all that the universe believes we deserve.