Dave Bonta's "Forestry" follows a speaker wandering through a forest from morning into evening, noticing small things as they come. A jay carries acorns, a squirrel buries one and digs it up again when it sees it's being watched, and spiderwebs shimmer in the sun. The human world intrudes only faintly, in the grinding of limestone, trucks in the distance, and the speaker's passing thoughts about macroeconomics, which sound oddly out of place among the trees.
The mood is quiet, attentive and a little wistful. The blueberries bound together make the forest feel enchanted, but later the speaker admits that falling leaves bring "some disillusionment," and the ridgelines look lower once the trees are bare. Still, the ending lifts the tone. The speaker has been counting sugar maples, which the poem describes as pale as breath and ringed by glowing fallen leaves. Loss is there, but so is a calm, almost reverent pleasure in simply looking.