The Enduring Winter Forest

A vast silver plate shields the sky. A remote
stillness muffles the atmosphere. There will
be no bright light illuminating the soft whiteness
of the newfallen mantle of snow humping the
forested landmarks. Even so, an iridescent veil
of luminous beauty shines like the ephemeral
vision it is, under that great metallic vault. Most
creatures of the forest are deeply invested
in their long winter sleep, unaware.

Last night's ferocious winds under a clear, dark
velvet, star-encrusted sky like a garment proudly
worn to an imperial ball, felled brittle lifeless tree
limbs. That same insistent wind blanketed the
blue velvet with a suffocating layer of dark and
threatening clouds laden with vapour, unleashed
on the frozen landscape below, transforming
it into a palace of marble and goosedown.

The forested courses of creeks and rivulets
have been inexorably glossed with opaque
ice, marbled with dry, fallen leaves trapped
within the frosted waterways. A softer wind
now gently spurs clots of gathered snow from
branches, sending the flakes like a spiralling
veil to pattern the smooth coverleted ground.

A tall, slender beech trunk reveals itself
wrapped tenderly round the sturdy body
of an old hornbeam. They share their twined
presence in the oddity of brown, dried leaves
still clinging to the home body. Twinned
yellow birches leaning on one another as though
for comfort, trunks riddled by sapsuckers, are
slowly losing their desiccated, slovenly bark.

Silence absorbs the dark wings of crows
as they ply the frigid air, and as the darkly
clever birds alight and peer down intently at
the frenzied search below, of equally dark, but
furred creatures spurning hibernation, searching
for their buried caches. A short, sharp report
alerts that the wind yet holds sufficient sway
to crack the weakest of tree limbs.

The fragrance of impending snow pervades
the environment. Another snowfall, on the
cusp of stifling the organized chaos of the
enduring, renascent winter forest.