A Sound I Can’t Hear

By Steve Heins

A Sound I Can’t Hear

Higher in the Rockies,

winds tune themselves

on the mountains and Ponderosa needles.

September cold, the wind blows asters

flat for seconds, then yellow-eyed,

they spring back purple as any distant peak.

Steamy, bubbling clouds announce summer’s end

and spill over the bowl edge of the Sangre de Christos.

A few aspens huddle near the tree-line,

they hear the clouds and yellow their leaves

before colder winds bring them

a harsher change of costume.

These aspens reveal the first vague

map of Autumn’s advance where

mountains, clouds, and trees

hear the howling winds I can’t.

Steve Heins