Rugged Northern California Wilderness

by Julia Lesel

Grinding. Pulsing. Flashing, dragging, crashing waves.
Rugged, jagged, foggy at various levels.
Bright yellow birch leaves sparkle, dotting through the sequoia forest-scape.
A glen of fat birches, flooded at the bases by creeping moss
Messy sword ferns the edge of a rapid river,
Shaggy, drooping from angular cliff walls, heavily wet.
Cattails elongating from thick spiny bushes
Flanking the winding road out of town.
Glassy silver-green leaf broad clumpy strangling vines,
Large silvery boulders dispersed between a bare spot in the strangling heaps.