Evensong*

I sit on my deck,
cup of lavender tea in hand
and listen to the plangent call
of mourning doves.

I hear the wind roar
through our towering
Norway spruce
and stand in awe.

I see the lambent end of day
as sun descends behind mountain’s crest,
morphing our valley’s verdant concavity
into opulent ambers and golds with its radiance.

I watch as crows
fly into the forest to roost,
their incantatory cawing
calling the rest of their crowd home.

I ruminate on the meaning,
the purpose, of life.
This is the moment
when my mind oscillates

from doubt to faith,
from faith to doubt,
and back again.

Nature’s wisdom
obfuscates my skepticism;
the concatenation of human suffering and natural beauty
overwhelms me.

*Note: I participated in a phenomenal writing workshop a while back. Our facilitator presented us with a list of fourteen words—some common, some not so common—to incorporate into a story or poem of our own making.  See if you can identify them in my poem. (Hint: look for 4 adjectives, 4 verbs, 6 nouns.)