Dunelands Revisited

when winter reigns
across the snow-bound dunes
I stand upon a crest of sand
amid tall winter-sleeping pines
where sweet silence is supreme
and gaze across a frozen inland sea
to a tall and distant city,
Chicago, rising vast and shining
from gleaming ice made crimson
by sinking winter sun.

When summer reigns
this place is deep with people
stained by humid heat
forest thick with thoughtless noise,
beaches flecked with garbage
dunes strewn with endless footsteps
water filled with rafts of bodies
a place I seldom go.

now winter reigns
the cold has come once more
to drive the seething crowds away
welcome silence falls again
on slumbering woods
winter storm has swept away all evidence
of once pervasive human presence
and I am content, returned
to gaze upon the distant city
in the frozen precious quiet
of winter dunes revisited.