The Forest

By Gigi George

Warm and brilliant looking gray

With blue-green shadows

Golden light shines through dense foliage

Fallen leaves and ragged branches

that make-up the forest floor

I feel the cool dry air

Hear the grasshoppers singing

See fingers of golden light

The forest is alive

with shadowy figures behind the trees

With a dense ceiling of branches overhead

Creaking and swaying

I smell a pall of yellow smoke rise from a burning tree

The warmth in the air is unmistakable

enveloping my senses to stay within its middle

But the air is suddenly cool, almost cold

With a pungent odor of decaying leaves

I feel the moist black earth

and the slippery wet paper texture of the leaves beneath my feet

Their coloring vary in shades of yellow and brown

Very much stained with death

Twigs and branches litter the earth

Some brittle with age others delicate and young

Knocked down by weight of a recent rain

They appear green as apples still clinging to life

as a vast stillness covers the forest

Only the stream running swiftly over its shallow bed of black earth can be heard.