Moss light, fern light, cinnamon and amber
filter stillness into the dew cool air
through interleaving fans of evergreen
whose years of fallen needles steep the grove
with an enlivening astringency
bedded around the redwoods’ knuckled root-grips
in the earth: alone, by leaning pairs and threes,
upright and sprawled flat into giant pieces,
in fairy rings and spacious aisles—old growth
surges out of sight into the shaded
lower branches of the crowns, where scattered
openings in the canopy admit
shafts of direct light to stand the column
of a sunbeam among the Sempervirens,
particles of floating dust and pollen
adrift across it, motes turning and returning
the shine that shows the light that makes them visible
as they swarm and mill and swim upstream
as though to spawn through waterfalls of sun.