Grey Rainfog

It is a grudging kind of quasi-
daylight that filters through a sky
crowded with dark clouds and
emits an arcane sense of foreboding.
These are the quiet environs
of a late fall forest where only
the immature ironwood and the
beech yet bear faint vestiges of foliage,
grey and papery. Freezing rain 
has painted tree trunks in shades
of black and grey. Ferns and yews
yet green the forest floor, and
the red wands of dogwood relieve
the grey and black monotone. 
Grey and opaque the mist that
hovers in the distance rising above
the clay banks of the forest creek
to the tapered tops of fir and spruce.
All is still but for a woodpecker
hunt-and-pecking the lichen-
shrouded bark of a dying ash.