The Forest Floor

The vast bowl of the autumn sky,
glimpsed through the patterns
of wind-ruffled leaves attaining
cheerful shades of primary colours
as their familiar chlorophyl-green
recedes, glows silver-grey, dappled
with dark grey clouds that loosed
upon last night's sleeping landscape
a veritable flood. An eerie light
filters through the forest, strange
and beautiful, illuminating the
colours in a transparent hue. Crickets
bow their high-pitched fall screed as a
breeze ruffles the forest canopy, and
dried leaves tumble like snow, assembling
a crackling-thick compost of discarded
matter to enrich the fecund forest floor.