Image credit: CDR

	Forestal Succession "Surely, men love darkness rather than light." - "The Succession of Forest Trees", Henry David Thoreau The maples ripple practicing their dappling. Oaks coax acorn's fall. The sky is not shy of the tops of the pines. Pride fills the timber line. The ferns have unfurled, turned brown, tips burned, soon dead. Spent the fiddlehead's whorl. Fending off shade, the blades end, give way to pale weeds. Breathe deeper, the needles. Dark. Dank with a musk. Rotting bark, empty husks rustle perpetual dusk. A tangle of vines, overgrown path. No cairn marks the wraith's aftermath.