Not Quite Silence But Almost It

It was in the Algonquin forest
of Ontario that I first experienced
it: Not quite silence, but almost it.

I only noticed it after we band of ruffians,
weekend hikers from Ann Arbor,
out to wrestle with the elements

and time-travel back to a time
when mobile phones were not even
a nascient idea in some geek’s back burner

and a time when people worked
for food and shelter, not rectangles
of colored paper and did not call it work.

It descended upon me like the laciest snow flake,
after we had all stopped our chattering
and squatted down next to the crystaline

creek which ran like the deer
and glistened in the last halos of the sun.
Not-quite-silence, but almost it.

On days when primevel forests
seem something found only in travel books,
when it seems that the color green

has abandoned the spectrum
and vanished in the hills far away,
I ransack the million compartments of my mind

and I’m almost back there;
not quite, but close enough
to feel its mighty pulse.