Ephemera

The landscape familiar at intervals
from year to year, one spring
to another, the revelations
brought by autumn exposure
transforms the familiar as though
a gifted artist had suddenly 
brushed an underlay on
an original canvas. For the
green screen absents itself,
frost, wind and shorter daylight hours
mounding the forest floor
with colourful, crisp foliage 
nestling pearls of morning dew
electrically lit by the generosity of
the sun illuminating areas
previously impenetrable, courtesy
of the forest's lush canopy, depleted.
Revealed, a hitherto unsuspected
landscape of mountain rockfalls
fuzzed with rich carpetings of moss
and undulating ferns among
the tenderest saplings of fir,
hemlock and spruce, a miniature
forest within a forest, minuscule ponds
and rivulets, irrigating the
divine mystery of it all.