The Acadian Forest
In little hidden places
The red fox and rabbit only know
Live the tiny forest flowers.
Mayflowers, foam flowers,
Star flowers, wood sorrel.
Wood anemones
Carpet the floor.
Miniature perfections,
They live in innocence
In their beauty.
This is Raven’s kingdom.
The Acadian forest
A fairy place
Of magic and mystery,
Of filtered sunlight and heavy rains,
Of gnarled roots and nurse logs,
Of brooks and ponds,
Skunk cabbage and fiddlehead,
Of moss and ferns.
A forest of many species
Tamaracks, maples,
Spruce and poplar,
Purple finches, pine siskins,
Mourning doves and Hummingbirds,
Where moose and deer still run,
Where squirrels chatter and woodpeckers drum.
And Raven surveys all.
Now, late July,
Dense patches of false violet
Line my little trail.
Triliums, Ladies Slippers, Bluebead lilies
Are memories now
Bunchberries show their red berries
Mushrooms,
Those sulphurous underworld visitors
Appear
In all their grotesque, intricate forms,
Colours, shapes.
Patches of dusty blueberries
For late summer’s bears
The beaver dam still holds
Altho its builders have moved on.
A lone blue heron guards the pond
And there are antlers in the undergrowth.
A place of secret beauty
Threatened by our greed.
And Raven
From the topmost spruce
Flings his curse –
Damned Be
Ye who violate
My sanctuary
Mary de La Valette is a poet, writer and activist in New Brunswick.
