One Summer Day, by Martin Elster

Beethoven and Nature, by N.C. Wyeth (USA) 1917

One Summer Day

While walking through the woods one summer day,
he glanced along a river, clear and bright,
saw bubbling notes like dappled fish at play,
and dashed them off that night by candlelight.
Meandering down coniferous-scented trails
where chickadees and tree frogs made such noise,
he didn’t hear a thing except the scales
and chords and cadences that were his toys.
He couldn’t hear the leaves in the aspen thickets,
the deer flies buzzing round his graying hair,
the sound of countless madly rasping crickets,
nor the peals of far-off thunder in the air.
Yet who can miss those leaves, that summer breeze,
that river rushing through his symphonies?

Martin Elster

Martin Elster finds contentment in long walks in the woods or the city and writing poetry, often alluding to the creatures and plants he encounters. His poems have appeared in Astropoetica, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Centrifugal Eye, The Chimaera, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, The Road Not Taken, and others, and is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. A full-length collection, Celestial Euphony, was published by Plum White Press in 2019.