In a forest 2/4/12

I am in a pine forest.  It is at the top of a hill, and here the trees gather the sighing of every breeze and the sighs of every soul from miles around, and stir them together in their swaying.  I look up, and in the stirring gap between the tops of the trees I see the bright sky.  It is trying to speak, but its sound is drowned by the sound of the branches.  It is a dumb light, that also cannot penetrate the darkness around me, a place of shadows, and beyond the shadows, of night.

A deer appears not far away, pauses and watches me.  As I do not move, it walks on, followed by a second deer, and then a third.  They merge into the shades of tree trunks and tree gaps, making no sound.
There are no baying hounds, there is no terror.  I am not Artemis, watched by another, whom I will have to condemn to death.  There is no pool where I might have bathed.  I am a shadow myself, a watcher, and I am waiting to see what will happen next.
Then I see the swimmers.  There is water after all, cascading silently, and two figures half submerged.   Their hair streams behind them, rippling with the current and the ripples run across their bodies, distorting them below the surface. There is no sound, although I see that they are calling to each other, invigorated by the stream that gushes and runs, flowing out of the darkness and on back into the darkness, barely catching a glimmer from the sky that is dumb, and barely stirred by the wind that waves and sighs so strongly around me.
I wrap my blanket closer around me.  I cannot sleep, and listen to the orchestra of sound from pine branches that stroke the air.