Shenandoah River

The trees of this place are a thing that cannot
be explained and the earth is so covered with them
in many parts and with so many dissimilarities,
both in their great size as well as in the trunk
and branches and bark; in their fruit and flowers,
that not even the white tail deer know them
completely. In places I cannot see the sky
from below this elm, oak, dogwood, maple,
evergreen, spruce, pine, walnut, hickory,
box elder, cherry, sycamore, or willow.

Follow a serpentine course along the river;
Trailing mosses and spreading ferns weave
throughout the rippling water. Listen, and
hear the droplets of a stream, the power
of a waterfall; but closer, the metallic
whine of cicadas discover the brooding silence.
It was an eerie morning, shadowed by growth
that transformed into a green twilight.