Creative Prompt #1 - Outside My Window

Outside. Being outside. It's never been much of my kind of pastime. Much like my singing range, barely hardly there at all, my ideal day is about as narrow as a rarely driven, old country road.

I step through the french doors into our backyard. Most of the time I'm out and back in having only accomplished exactly what I set out to do and nothing more. Today, this day, I decide to spend time outside for the sake of joy in nature. Well, as natury as suburban life allows, considering the scene never changes. Hmm, my beginnings here are dreary. I have to wonder, what on earth am I truly trying to accomplish here? A change in attitude maybe, forcing myself to imagine that which I rarely do. Let's try again.

It's nighttime and calm. The moon is hidden, either by the earth or cloud cover. I'm not sure. The stars aren't terribly bright either so the darkness envelopes my surroundings. I drop into my hammock swaying gently as I lay back and settle in for the night.

I feel little. I see even less, so I close my eyes. Though I hear a cacophony from the neighboring area and wooded strip of land behind the blocks of homes. The birds have settled till morning, but the trees whoosh and crackle. My world is filled with whistles and whirs, hoots and chirps. Crickets and frogs, an occasional hoot owl, and other insect life all busy the night with their individual designs of life, doing their own things, not concerning themselves with the other. Yet it all meshes together to become the nighttime symphony relaxing the spirit and body.

I listen. I feel more now. The breeze is cool and light. It crosses my skin lightly, picks up speed passing through the cotton threads of my garments, then disappears for a little while. The irregular rhythm of the breeze is as certain as the randomness of the nighttime symphony. And as time bears down on the wee hours of the night, the cooler it gets.

Night life perseveres until the early dawn when everything relinquishes their song and dance to honor the rising of the morning star.