The Spring Forest

Through a brief window in
the cloud-cast sky shone the
sun upon a still-frigid world
of departing winter. A ferocious
wind hurled the clouds to close
the blue gap and the world
turned a silvery grey. In the
forest below, its floor yet deep
in snow and ice the wind
bellowed through bare-branched
trees, and they clacked and moaned
in the tumult, casting aside
broken branches while long dead
trunks threw off dessicated
bark, leaving them unabashedly
gaunt and wasted, gloomily
naked of the facade of rot. The
swollen creek, roiling with 
melted snow, lifts the odour of
swamp gas into the grey
atmosphere. From above, a raven
croaks its desolate contempt.