Behind the red limbed trees, and above the grey blue water, their voices rose, honking, triadic, together. Tuned just slightly off from the mallards and pintails, they harmonized with the lake's sounds liltingly, jarringly, loudest and most chaotic of the auditory elements. 

Nature is like this. You go into it, expecting nothing. You see leaves, brown and splattering the ground, grass crisped white and the earth lifted and broken by hoar frost. 

The lichens, green and key-lime yellow, are stiff in the cold. The off-white ice, capping every puddle like marbled old paper, both translucent and opaque. 

There are ducks, flying in elastic groups into the lake and out of it, a few brown song sparrows, wrens of unknown species, and blackbirds, singing with the starlings on the wire. Then this, unexpected in the brittle cold, our toes all siding with the frost in our boots, our hands wrapped around binoculars, pink as babies. 

Their honking. I can see why its named what it is, trumpeting, it is, it is trumpeting, it is a strange singing lifting fluting, it is windy and reedy, honking, humorous. Their white necks sway backward and forward like snakes as they swim, rippling the water, their massive white bodies thrilling the lake, their black instruments firmly in place on their faces. There is no description, no words, for the sudden, dynamic events that nature keeps, hidden in ordinary moments, that over and over, I never think will come. 

It was fleeting, but bright, like a thing at night which breaks the darkness, streaking. 

Perhaps a made up word, the title is, but it contradicts the appeal.  

A poem, for me, is short phrases of words pack with zip and zeal.

It's a glimpse, a wink, a nod toward themes of trepidation and fear

Subjects I don't dare look on fully, face, or, EVER get anywhere near

Hide behind the safety of symbolism, imagery, metaphor and pun

Insincere like the sarcastic wit for which I am a most famous one

Prose, a tall, clean mirror that, try as I might, I can't hide behind

The cloak of poems, stained glass, whose clear image one can't find

Still, the challenge a fellow proser kindly poses is a most vexing one

For this mere mortal, devoid of any real penned talent, under the sun

Humbly, vainly, I attempt to use bigger (clearer?) words, stretch lines

Like stretch MARKS really, ugly, purple and indelible- my rhymes

Have you now seen me more clearly, more naked before you I so am

Hurry now, read without haste, all this attention?  Ick, I have to jam

This "neoverbosity" does not suit me one little, tiny, eensy-weensy bit

Back to the shadows, the (mis-)interpretations, the rhymes I make fit

Rock on, word fragments, sentence play, chaos lack of any/all control

Rules, grammar, structure, logic?  Order, routine?- oh, how very droll

So, kind proser, with your verbose challenge, you so very much stink!

(You DO know I'm kidding!!  name-calling is so immature, ya think?!)

I died as I lived, and lived as I died. Look away; the pain is still trapped in my eyes.I loved as I hated and hated my love, I cursed and I cried at the God up above. You know me as someone who never had sense, but beneath this insanity, I see through your lens. I'm scared of myself and the world's scared of me. I'm probably scared of just who I could be. Oh, the things I could do! The words I could say! It's such a shame that I wasted my days. 

I cried as I laughed, and laughed as I cried. My words spilled over and I choked as I lied. You didn't believe me. I saw it in your eyes. I killed everything I loved, everything died. I choked up the ink I used to print out my books, I shelved my emotions with the effort it took. I stored them in cabinets, neat little nooks. At night I'd have freak-outs and rip them all down, I'd swim in my bathtub in hopes that I'd drown. I'd wake up in the morning and find my works destroyed, and blame them on feelings and wishes and boys. I changed myself to turn away from the lies, I tried as I failed and failed as I tried. I shut off the light to make room for the dark, I hid my fearful, fast-beating heart. You may not believe me, think I'm made of lies, but I died as I lived and lived-as I died.

It was winter and the winds sang, whistled through shivering trees. Snow danced with the breeze, light and powdery, bright and sweet, along the ground, giggling and hiccuping with joy into the whitened field beyond. Late squirrels, brown and cold, latched onto trees with round stuffed mouths, ran up to their homes and houses and settled down to rest. 

Cold nips at fingers feet, toes nose, freezes my face makes me squint to see winter's beauty. The sky is grey the trees are stark and barren, the ground is pure and ethereal, shining like diamond dust in faint sunlight and geese honk, a desolate sound that makes everything perfect. 

The stream is dead by my side, frozen solid through and through, paralyzed and vulnerable I take my heavy boot and slam it down, feel the ice crack! beneath my weighty feet I pick it up with wooly gloves and marvel at the shape, the intricacies. Air bubbles and holes, spiderweb cracks spanning the entire surface, so clear that when I look through it I can see every fallen twig every green pine every flake of snow, and when I look at it the world distorts so pretty so perfect when I put the ice down the world seems so plain. So 2-D. 

So simple so boring it hurts my heart to think about. Makes my chest ache with want. I wish the world were better. I wish the world stayed pretty and frozen, unmoving unchanging, numb to the pain of change I wish the world could be sweet and snowy forever, silent. Wasn't silence sweet? It swells to tremendous heights, filling up empty spaces and forgotten corners. Silence is the noise of perfection.                     

My breath comes out like dragon smoke in front of me. My eyelids flutter as flurries of snow brush against them. The trees rustle, and somewhere in the distance the geese honk.

Picture perfect. If I close my eyes, I can stretch now into forever.