The Landscape

This is a forest steeped deeply in snow
gathered over a season whose months
were rife with atmospheric winter tantrums
varying between plunged temperatures
frantic bursts of wind dispersing heavy
snowfalls alternating with confusion
in the upper atmosphere where Arctic
air collided with bursts gone astray from
warmer climes losing themselves on a
puzzling journey that brought them to a
weather collision resulting in freezing rain
and landscapes buried but not forgotten
glazed with ice pellets and threats to
survival of the unprepared. Nature's
occasional confused state or perhaps her
sense of mischief presents the iconic
display of winter beauty, of forests
whose silent, dark sentinels of the season
rise stark above the buoyant forest floor
yet the air is suffused not with snow this
day but an abundance of unadulterated rain
absorbed by the snowpack awaiting
release from its accumulated fastness.