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.