Spring Forest

Along the exterior confines
of the forest, wildflowers bloom
their seasonal blush and
thrushes herald the sun penetrating
the early morning cloud cover
and the forest canopy to glance 
its warming rays on wild orchids
and lilies. The forest understory
is wild with bracken, moose maple
dogwood and hemlock saplings
all verdantly gleaming with 
the overnight inversion's dew.
A fiercely fluming mountain
stream sends its spray and its
drumming fury in a crescendo
of nearby sound from runoff 
down the slopes. The fragrance
of a fallen spruce permeates the
atmosphere as a Yellow Admiral
glides past a hemlock into the
welcoming green arms of a fir.


 

Connecting ...

The connection is obviously
flawed. It's a cellphone
after all, and the distance
it covers is vast. Her voice
sounds oddly strained
and I pick up the thread
of her statements with
difficulty. Bad enough I feel
guilt in the situation. We
away enjoying ourselves
and she at home in the
stultifying sameness of day
following day, nothing of
interest intervening. So
when she asks I respond
that it's cold here, with
prospects of imminent rain
to spoil opportunities and
her voice brightens telling
me what a lovely warm day
she has enjoyed. We each
in our own way relieved.

Forest Climax, Renewal

Underfoot, untold generations of
desiccated fall waste, needles, 
twigs and seasonal foliage decayed 
and enriching the forest floor,
leafmould become a soft moist
and life-enriching carpet, a nursery
to welcome the regeneration and
resurgence of new life as the forest
feeds upon itself, fungi inspired
to existence by rotting wood fibre,
bracken revisiting life on the
decay of earlier generations as
deciduous and conifers share
the nurturing bounty inciting them
to aspire to majesty in the lineage
of their species as exemplars in
reflection of nature's scheme of
birth and death, climax and renewal.

 

The Forest Fastness

The sweet trill of a Northern
thrush pierces the insistent sound
of water rushing from the
mountain summit down the slopes
to thrash and tumble, spewing
white-frothed spray over the
long-since-fallen boulders below
crowding the bed of the mountain
stream. In the forest damp with
rainfall, hemlock, spruce, oak 
and maple are flush with early
spring's growth spurt. Moose
maple, dogwood and sumac
surge into growth, glistened,
brightly moistened and trundling
to maturity. Ostrich fern luxuriantly
unfurling, violets and Ladies Slippers
glow their nuanced shades of
pink on the forest floor. Swarms
of newly-hatched Mayflies briefly
screen the air. Yellow Admirals
perform their peerless aerial
arabesques. The spring woods
are alive with the sound, colour
and boundless vigor of renewal.

 

Of Like Nature

It is an unwritten law of
humanity that those who see
value in loving nature love
other people. To be slightly
more precise those who invest
their own natures in an
exploration of the pleasures
inherent in seeking out
natural surroundings tend
to be of like mind with
similar values and centres of
pleasure and so respect and care
for one another, strangers
though they may be. This
predilection surfaces when
they meet however briefly
during an ephemeral chance
encounter in passing one
another on a wilderness trail,
a bond however transitory in
time is forged that will live
on in memory attached to an
ascent of a mountain, an
extended canoe trip and portage,
a prolonged forest hike
when mind meets mind.

 

Garden Drama

The stage is immense as
befitting the magnitude of
the drama, a screenplay like
none other, the divine work of
the Mistress of the Universe who
this dawn was sufficiently
distracted to attend to a micro
portion of her grand estate.
Ordering up her minions
to cast a net of dark clouds
to copiously inundate our
intimate landscape, soon
tiring of its unending gloom
to call on the blinding chariot
of the sun to dispel the dark
and wind to dry the landscape
so our gardens emerged in
triumphant, luxurious exaltation.

 

Nature's Covenant

Generous to a fault we have
Nature to thank for the
priceless reality of existence.
The fault lies in its finite measure
accomplished by pairing life
with time. Realizing the flaw
in her blueprint to invest
fertility and fecundity in her
creatures, sharing the divine
act of creation, it struck the
mistress of existence that all
life must pause, expire and be
reborn. So the transitory reality
of life dogged and hectored by
restless time has resulted in
the ephemerality of beauty of
will and of mind, some things
living vanishingly briefly
entrances and exits set by the
calendar year, others clinging
longer, but all ultimately
fated to fade and decline
awaiting inevitable replacement.