Remember when you cut your foot on the guardrail?
The fireworks were booming around you like sharp music
As you stared out into the fading blush
Of the sun’s glow. And on the walk
Home, when the neighbor boy held the flashlight
You turned back to see, retreating into darkness, the woods.

How much time have you spent in those woods
Or walking barefoot on that sharp guardrail?
How many times have you been so captivated by the blinking city lights
That you forget you’re even there, forget sometimes to listen to the music
As you stroll along the paths on which you so often walk
In the later hours, under the sky’s dwindling blush?

Watching the sunset, colored in its sky-blue-pink blush
As your mother fills the firepit with sticks from the backyard “woods”.
You observe the deer as their babies learn to walk
And creep tentatively through the bushes, over the guardrail,
Leaping on shaking legs. You listen to the music,
And although you cannot see it, your smile casts a blinding light.

Outside your window still glow the streetlights.
Their security breaks at the end of night with early morning’s golden blush
And the bird calls echo like long-forgotten music.
As they flap their wings over you and the deer, the once-dark woods
Come alive again, sunrise catching on the rusted guardrail.
Your mother goes for her morning walk.

Each night again down the darkened alley you walk,
Peering through the trees to catch a glimpse of the lights,
Teetering dangerously on the coarse edge of the guardrail,
Admiring the way the growing cold makes the trees seem to blush
In the speckled red canopy of the woods. 
You close your eyes and bury yourself in the music.

What simple pleasures of life we often overlook! Music,
Bringing its contemplative distraction to even the most dreadful walk, 
The sights and smells of changing seasons in the woods, 
The moments of peace before we surrender to the death of light,
The faces of the ones we love, aglow with rosy blush,
And the long, cold nights spent sitting and thinking on the guardrail.

Don’t forget to appreciate the woods, or to photograph the light
Which resonates like the soft music of fairies. You hear it as you walk.
But no camera could ever truly catch its blush- that is for you; well, you and the guardrail.