Tahoe's Beauty Springs Forth

Upon the first day-spring rays,

Soar and swoop the steely glared Jays

Translucent aromatic sap

Runs, dribbling, laying a sticky trap

Fat June bugs lodged in countless tacky nooks

Hit every flat surface with a juicy splat

Glistening mists settle through bouncing pine boughs

Squirrels swirl round trunks

Chittering in dischord as they toss down heavy cones

Lacy blooming shrubs line hillsides and ring trees

Beneath the swaying canopy

Preparing elderberries for our winter maladies

Fat, purple, juicy once ripe

Leave them for later, let them sweeten, concentrating nature's magic

Eddying yellow pollen mandalas

Splattered across the landscape

Every puddle drying to a blazing saffron smear.

Puffy bumble bees surf the whirling lupine seas

Hovering through the rainbow layers

Witness, join them as they ride the spiking wave of joyful prayer

The glorious noontime sun’s yellow glare

Nearly oppressive, matched in glorious hue by the daffodil cascade

blazing down the slope like a flow of golden magma

A racketing slapping projects from the marsh

Flat beaver's tails signal rebirth in the basin’s river and creeks

A guttural wheezing growl erupts from the brush

A matriarch followed by her playful ursine troupe

Somersaulting, as they lay out their scavenged picnic in the midday sun

The crazed yipping of a roving band of coyotes

Echos off the stone bowl, down their skipping hunting trails

Whipping ‘round their curling tails

Swarms of gnats swallow up the dwindling rays

Behind the silhouette of Tahoe

Lay the kaleidoscopic lake

Painted with a sky of cosmic reflections

K.B. Silver