Rushing Greens

In the Pacific Northwest, there are forests cocooned in mosses. 

There are ferns within the moss; the dark matte leaves stark against the green mustard fuzz. Lichens against rock, grey lime flakes digesting stone, black wet boughs fallen and giving life for having fallen; pale cream fungi, and this being cruel March, a lilac petal like a lost piece of candy unmuddied and beautiful. 

It was all so green, my God I did not know there were so many greens, dappled across the cliffside, the spectrum from blue to yellow in hue and textures as yet unimagined. 

The air a mix of pine resin, fresh mud and the stale musk of rotting wood. The trail jagged, unsympathetic, and in the rain pure hazard, following the climbing road, to the sound, beginning in your feet and raising, of water falling, always falling, in ceaseless argument with stone. 

Above not so high the water poured over shot white with froth; from behind, within the hollow of the rock, we stood close together in the mist, looking past the falling water, past the shallow pool that birthed the stream, past the trees and cliffs and even the white austere peak of Mt. Hood, to the lonely Moon trapped in her lavender box of sky. 

You wore rosewater that day Marie, bathed in it I’ve thought, and every moment of your head was like a perfumed sensor, swells of red and pink aromas, of hot summer blossoms, now, here, in screaming contrast to raw cool wilderness, you were a flame my darling, and I was your moth.