Notes

The enchanted forest beckoned me into its pulsing heart. How could I resist such a lush Garden of Eden? The deep, haunting ballad of its ancient song called out to me. As old as Adam, the forest was still steeped in plushness and opulence.
With a light heart, I plunged into the over-arching vault of leaf and limb. It was not what I had expected. The exquisiteness of the dawn’s light had not yet lanced to the lush, green sward. Because of this, hoods of black shadow hung in the groves.
Coils of vaporous mist enwrapped the shaggy heads of the oak trees. They writhed around them like a conjuror’s milky smoke, sensuous and illusory. Sieves of mist caressed the lichen-encrusted bark. Adding its phantasmal gas to the damp breath of the forest, it glided with deadly intent. It deadened sound, haunted glades and poured into empty spaces. A sepulchral silence overhung the hallowed ground where the trees dared not grow. Nothing stirred, nothing shone, nothing sang. A hollow echoing, like the hushed tones of a great, slabbed cathedral, entombed the wood.
Then a finger of supernal light poked through the misty mesh. It was followed by a whole loom of light, filtering down in seams of gold. Like the luminal glow of the gods, it chased the shadows, banished the gloom and spilled into spaces where the mist once stalked. The fluty piping of a songbird split the silence just as the forest became flooded with light. A fusillade of trilling and warbling detonated all around me as the primordial forest came alive with the troubadours of the trees. I darted between shafts of lustrous-gold light as I went, admiring the butterflies. They pirouetted in the air, their wings a-whirr like little ripples of silk.
The glory of the forest was revealed in the birthstone-bright light. Almond-brown trees stood serenely, awash with a tender glow. Their bark looked like riffled toast and gems of amber clasped their crusty exterior. The first blush of the morn gave the leafy bower a green-going-to-gold complexion.
Idling past suede-soft flowers, I caressed them softly, getting tingles in my fingers. My ears perked up at the metallic, tinkling sound of a stream. It flashed with a tinsel tint through the lace of leaves. When the trees parted, I could see it was sliding into an infinity-pool. The pool looked like a polished mirror of silver, with skeins of swirl-white twisting slowly on the surface. A shiny spillway led to a choppier pond. Boulders colonized the edges of the pond, buffed with pillows of moss. They caused a rocky gurgling as water met stone; a swish, a clunk, a swell and a clop. Sweet fragrances, alluvial and palliative, seemed to flit in and out of my awareness. Sight and smell vied for attention in this soul-enriching dream world.
I put my back against a knobbly boulder, leaning my head against the mossy pillow. I closed my eyes, let my stream of consciousness take hold, and drifted into infinity. When I awoke, I couldn’t remember my dream, but softness and silvers still lingered in the memory of it.