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| Spring whispers of beginnings, summer invites me to wander, autumn teaches me to let go, and winter reminds me to be still. Each one has its own voice. I only have to listen. |
When I was little, I didn’t think of a river, falling leaves, fresh snow or the first flowers of spring as poetry. They were simply things I loved—things that made me want to stop, look, listen and wonder.
I remember the seasons feeling enormous then. Summer meant throwing myself into the water without worrying how cold it might be. Autumn meant running through leaves just to hear them crunch and rustle beneath my feet. Winter meant falling backwards into fresh snow, and spring meant crouching down to see what tiny green thing had appeared where yesterday there seemed to be nothing at all.
I didn’t know those moments were teaching me something.
It was only when I grew older that I began to understand that every season had its own voice. Nature had been telling its stories all along, and somehow, as a child, I had learned to listen before I ever knew what to call it.
Perhaps that is where my poetry really began.
Before the notebooks. Before the poems. Before I knew the words.
Nature gave them to me.
I simply learned to write them down.
Before I Knew the Words
I learned to read the earth before my name,
When summer was a bright and rushing stream,
I’d dive beneath the water's liquid flame,
And drift away inside a golden dream.
Then autumn came to paint the canopy,
And down the leaf-strewn trails I used to bound,
To dance amid the amber falling free,
And hear the music rustling on the ground.
When winter cast its white and heavy shroud,
I fell into the drift with open arms,
To shape an angel beneath a frozen cloud,
And find a stillness in the season's charms.
Then spring would wake the soil with gentle green,
To watch the silent petals burst and rise,
The sweetest verse that I had ever seen,
Unfolding right before a child's eyes.
Nature gave the words, and so I write—
Archiving every season, dark and bright.
— Khalia Wildawn 💚