Tableau of My Street

Two magpies warbling

in the sunny day

soar across my street,

my little hill street

beneath the mountain

and the great clear sky.

In all the gardens

lining my calm street,

trees and more trees reach

high and wide. There is

an ease, a leisure,

in their space, their spread.

The magpies, too, are

blithely unhurried

although gone too soon

with their liquid song,

guided by instinct

as their lives require.

They won’t go as far 

as the mountain. That

is home to eagles.

Those, I love to watch

riding the currents

of the lofty winds.

But that’s memory:

an earlier street

the other mountain

and my love, who was

alive then, watching

beside me, smiling.

This town surrounded

by mountains and birds,

and everywhere trees,

delights me daily. 

In the long nights, still,

I know myself blessed.

Sharing with Friday Writings #143 at Poets and Storytellers United. 

Off prompt. Instead I'm pinching a recent form prompt from dVerse: the tableau poetry style. (The instructions say 5 beats per line, but examination reveals them to be not beats but syllables. Beats in a line of poetry are usually understood as the stressed syllables.)