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The Song of the Earth
By Lyra Celestial
Copyright Lyra Celestial 1999*
It was dusk.
The sun gave out his last burst of rays from behind the
hill tops
before sinking out of sight. The moon turned her smiling face upon the
world, glowing brightly, and the stars winked on, one by one. The
crickets began their chorus of chirping, the ringing song rising up
through the trees. To most ears it was noise, but to the crickets
themselves it was a melody woven with notes and tunes of each individual,
rising up to eventually become one sound. A sound that defined the night
itself.
Deep within the trees the crickets became silent as a
leopard padded
the soft earth, feeling the ground with his paws. It was growing darker,
but the leopard's eyes were sharp. He moved through the underbrush
noiselessly, crouched low to the ground. The pale black spots on his tan
fur became translucent against the soft soil dappled with moonlight.
Before him stood a gazelle, grazing beside a pond. The
gentle wind
blew north, and the leopard was standing north of the gazelle, unnoticed
but 20 feet away. The crickets seemed to sing louder, and the gazelle's
ears swiveled. Her head came up, but the leopard moved not. She stood
firm upon the ground, listening to the secrets the wind sang. Still as a
statue for one fleeting moment, then the gazelle was leaping, soaring
with the wind across the pond, leaving only a trail of ripples where she
had been. The leopard retreated as silently as he had come.
It was dawn.
The sun spread his arms of illumination across the
hills, touching
each living thing with his warm fingers. The moon yawned and closed her
eyes, fading but still visible in the coming daylight.
Birds woke, stretching their wings and rising up their
voices to the
sun, praising a new day. Blue birds chattered about everything in
general, mocking birds sang out with pleasure, changing their tunes as
quickly and frequently as they liked. The air was filled with song and
colorful wings, fluttering through the air and rejoicing simply being
alive. Each song had a different meaning, whether it was a pleasant one
or one of sorrow. For the woods would be silent if no birds sang but the
best.
In the stream the fish leaped, weaving through currents
and sending
sparkling prisms of water into the air, shattering before the sun. With
the river they went, tumbling down waterfalls and sliding over mossy
rocks. Far away they could hear the call of the ocean, and the fish
soaked in this call and were drawn to it.
The sun shone patterns on the water's surface, breaking
up in
currents and waves, gleaming like glass on the still pools. Beneath this
sun, in the river, the fish splashed, and in the ocean the whales sang.
Below the surface the humpback whales glided, mighty tails pumping with
strong movements. The elders opened their mouths to engulf the seawater,
and then they sang. Eerie noises that floated through the ocean, rising
up and down in pitch, singing a song that defined each whale. They sang
of their lives, beginning with birth and then migration, lovers and
wonderful swims to the surface and down through the ocean, miles below
the surface. The song was unending, repeated over and over and mingling
with all the other songs so that they all became one.
And high above the whales the birds joined in, the
crickets and the
fish, the leopard and the gazelle. And together they were joined,
becoming the great Song of the Earth that never dies, never ends, but
simply meets back together to form a circle and continues throughout
eternity.
