Chain link fence with barbed wire greeted the visitor to the dream.
We could not enter so we walked around Nature’s extravagant garden.
We followed a narrow thread of a trail which
          stitched its way through the green fabric of the forest.
The ground, underfoot, was a jigsaw puzzle of leaves, bits of bark, and pebbles.
The air was saturated with the scent of moist evergreen compost,
          a silent shout from a hillside defiant with life.
We passed trees dressed in velvety moss sporting calico patches
         of green, yellow and bark.
Fronds of green were about us, everywhere—a climbing army on the hillside
         taking a break from their labors.
The trail adorned itself with dainty flowers which would never know life in a vase.
Above it all stood towering sentinels guarding their occasional fallen comrades.
Their arms held multi-leveled lacy branches vibrating in the breeze, like
         the fans of an exotic dancer parsing out glimpses of the sky.
At the end of our trail lay stones; abandoned enormous toy building blocks
         piled imprecisely at the end of play.
Beside the stones, behind the fence, we spied silhouettes, patches of sky and trees
         mirrored in emerald reflection hugged by the silently crowding undergrowth.
At center stage, a tiered gray rock supported a bridal gown of white-flowing water,
         like a department store display of a June-bride manikin.
In fact it was a Sunday in June; we on the other side of the fence.  
         We were told that the park and the pool would not be open till the first of July.
Somehow the trees, the water, the ferns, the flowers, and my heart knew better.

J. Sandy