The Forest Fastness

In this forest, Hemlocks dominate
from the aged giants to their
serried-in-time successors
and the current year's seedlings,
all tipped fluorescent-green
with spring growth. Among them
Yellow Birch, giants to saplings,
Pine and Fir, Spruce and Oak, 
with an understory of Moose Maple
and Dogwood, the forest floor
crowded with ferns, Solomons Seal,
clusters of Lily-of-the-Valley,
Violets, Bunchberry and orchid
Ladies Slippers. Thrushes call
melodiously from tree masts,
Yellow Admirals float on warm
breezes. The stream roiling down
from the mountains above 
thrashes and roars as it slaps 
against boulders long tumbled
from the mountain into the
stream bed, sending cold spray in
a wide arc. The mountain valley
is forever humid where curled, 
grey lichen cling to the trunks of
grizzled behemoths whose canopy
permits only slender fingers of
sunlight to penetrate, probing
that damp forest fastness.