Silence, or its near cousin

It's 1 a.m. here (I'm a hopeless night owl). Just wandered out to get the mail -- I've let it go for the last few days -- and the neighborhood is so still that you can hear the wind soughing through the cottonwoods behind our house. Even though we live a stone's throw away from the boondocks out here, I don't often get the chance to savor the rich near-silence of an early morning. Absolute silence outdoors makes it seem as though the world was newly-made and still waiting for living things.

The Seven Sisters are up in the eastern sky.