The First Day Of Winter

I do love quiet places far from the noisy street
Where the sea going river and lesser creek meet
Where butcherbird in his cloak of brown and gray
Pipe his bubbling notes in the quiet rural day

The water downhill to the great ocean flow
Yet so little of Nature's ways i seem to know
And even students of Nature will tell you that they
Learn something new of her every living day.

The workings of Nature beyond me to explain
Though from her such pleasure we all seem to gain
The wild duck quack and the moorhen cries out on the lake
And the kookaburra's laughter echoes at daybreak.

The first day of Winter is one day nearer Spring
And the praises of Nature i do love to sing
One might say there is a cold nip in the air
And the deciduous trees are now looking bare.

In a few weeks the tiny breeding frogs in the wind and the rain
Will sing in the pond and the dam and the drain
And though the cold sky may look overcast and gray
The Spring is drawing nearer with the birth of each day.