The Sleeping Forest

One of those days it is, a still
landscape of winter in progress, a
hiatus between fiercely piercing winds
making ill alliance with a penetrating
icy atmosphere following a series of
snowfalls leaving all innocently
white blanketed and postcard perfect.
Everything in this season is 
ephemeral and hauntingly lovely
distanced from the vicious storm.
When a gentler aura pervades in a
moderating time between an onslaught
and the merest breeze lifts a ghostly
skein of snow from tree to forest floor
and a copse of symmetrical spruces
are sugared with icy snow glittering
their magic presence on a spectacular
white arras, perfection is attained.
When, through the filtered light of late
afternoon the bright, diffused warmth
of the sun hanging in a cloud-fleeced sky
breaks splendidly through the
collective screened masts of the
sleeping forest's leafless colony.