A Climax Forest

It is the very epitome of a climax
forest, where giant yellow birch 
have finally succumbed to age and
the ferocity of winter storms, their
thick, shaggy bark rimmed with moss
and lichen rotting on the forest floor
now becoming as one with the
generations of leaf mass, nurturing
saplings of oak and hemlock, birch
and maple. The forest interior
thick with maturing trees and an
assertive understory of dogwood
sumac and striped maple -- the
atmosphere in a perpetual state of
high humidity while in the prevailing
dusk the forest thrums with life
from the presence of butterflies and 
bees, toads and squirrels, birds and 
foxes, coyotes, turkeys, woodpeckers
and song sparrows, all commend the
biosphere's allegiance to nature.