Forests, Past
...The hemlocks on the ridge are dying: that this makes me sick with sadness is one of my odd sensitivities, I suppose. Yet here is one in view that still has needles enough to hold snow. See the regular, graceful way they spread their dark arms just so? And snow falls flake by flake, in such depth of distance, so matter-of-factly, each a creation of its own predictable unpredictability of form and beauty. Fragments December 2003