The Green Canopy

The sun glories in the afternoon's
cloudless sky bestowing its powerful
radiation of energy and heat on a
summer-panting landscape of green.
All is still in the woods, grateful for a
gentle breeze, lightly swaying leaves.

Yellow loosestrife, buttercups and
daisies, purple cowvetch and fleabane
line the verdant corridors of bass, oak, pine,
sumac and spruce. The bright blossoms
of thimbleberry promise plump pink
late-summer berries for the picking.

A stream is stopped at low trickle, closely
dammed by an impenetrable fortress of
forest detritus, carried along on the high
tides of copious rainfalls, washing branches,
twigs, rotted stumps and clay banks down
the hillsides and into the forest stream.

The deep open gash in a tall old pine
no longer serves as an owl nest. The
fledgling now gone, feathers and flight
finally attained under anxious scrutiny
and patient tutelage of its parents. No
longer does its strange mewling hoot
of a cry cling to the green canopy.