Mountain Forest

The stillness of the forest is
broken by the random joyous peals
of a Northern thrush, unseen
high on a hemlock bough under a
leaden-clouded sky where the
sun still emits bright rays through
random cracks in the cloud cover.
This is a forest of mixed hardwood
and conifers lush in a new spring
canopy, a cool wind threading 
through oak and maple, yellow birch
and hemlock; and giant pines whose
masts remain green with needles,
their massive trunks stippled with
dead branches where sun cannot
penetrate. The mountain stream
glistens, roars and churns in its
tumbling rush over rockfalls 
littering its brash descent. Frogs and
salamanders spurt across moss-banked
shallow ponds bespeaking an
incorrigibly high water table, a bog 
where caddisfly larvae and damselflies 
share the space of emergence. The 
supreme elegance of the natural 
world balancing the future.