The Unleafed Forest

A fiercely black crow, haunting
the airspace, silently following
our daily amble through these
spring woods. Along the way,
squirrels, waiting patiently
for the deposit of endless
peanuts. Years of expectation
encourages some to directly
advance their distance.

Advanced, albeit slowly in this
cold, wet and windy spring, are
the flora finally greeting our eyes.
Bedding grasses, trout lilies now at
last nodding yellow flower-heads
much more delicately aesthetic
than the sun-loving, deprived
coltsfoot sitting forlornly beside
the bank of the ravine's creek.

We hazard guesses where
the white trilliums will bloom
their rare presence among the
common carmine species in the
clay-and-sand soil of the ravine.
Here and there the muted mauve
of tiny woodland violets.

Lush mosses have resumed
their glowing presence on old tree
trunks along with lichen and orange
ruffled shelf fungi, awakened to
new possibilities. Woodpeckers'
triumphant discoveries of palatable
new hunting-and-pecking pierce
through the yet-unleafed forest.