THE OAKS' GRAVEYARD

The Oaks’ Graveyard.

The oaks are dead.

Straying from the road,

I stumbled on their secret graveyard,

enclosed within a stand of living trees

where their remains now rest –

eighteen in all and once of mighty size,

but now just severed and uprooted stumps,

hidden from the common sight within a roadside copse.

This stand of trees was once a greater wood,

where, no doubt, oaks grew strong and tall.

(Not far away, the last of these still lives –

its massive, hollow shell

now standing like a spectre

beside the old lane’s edge.)

I’ve passed here many times before

but never guessed that in this shady place

these precious relics,

each like a wooden Ozymandias, lay:

cut down, uprooted, left to rot,

and overshadowed by tall-growing ash and birch.

Some upright, others on their sides,

each forms its own memorial

but all without a name or date recording their demise.

And overhead, the reverend rooks

in well-worn Sunday black

preach from sky-roofed pulpits,

chanting never-ending funeral rites

or delivering grim sermons

on death’s inevitable grip,

while a woodpecker

is hammering in coffin nails.

Across the sky, a red kite haunts the fields,

uttering its strident, plaintive cries,

not mithering for the oaks  

but in mocking tones bemoaning

the death inflicted

by its own beak and claws.

 

 

THE MAN WHO KNEW TREES

The man who knew trees.

 

He moved like a man who knew trees -

not as objects, or even equals -

but, certain in his mind

that here were the greatest of all living creatures,

he stepped comfortably and quietly through the wood

and, without presumption or design,

acknowledged every one as if it were a friend.

 

               “Trees,”

he said, speaking as a believer would when entering a church,

“are the oldest living beings on the earth,

and make our span seem like a second’s passing.

If, out of necessity, we have to cut one down,

we should first beg its forgiveness,

as do hunters, living off the land,

when they must kill an animal for food,

out of respect

because they know the prey control the hunt;

or like a reluctant executioner

whose duty is to make a martyr of a saint.

For whenever an old tree dies or is destroyed,

we lose a library

where birds and animals have always come

to gain the knowledge of all of nature’s ways

and even we can, if we have a mind,

study how the world is made.”

FROM WHINNY HILL

From Whinny Hill

A potent pathway runs along the rim,

trodden since unlettered times

beyond the consciousness of man

by feet that understood the power of paths.

But now the roads on lower land prevail

and these high places no longer stimulate

the stagnant soul and stultified imagination. 

Still, we whose heads have always been in clouds

can gaze on sights unknown to those

whose tiny minds are there below,

amongst the tiny works of men:

the houses, villages and fields,

where their inconsequential voices

could never pierce the wildness of the wind. 

Only in high places do we truly know

the sacredness of space.

Only here, above the daily clamour,

can we stand and listen

to the turning of the earth,

hear the wisdom that the birds impart

and feel the pull of ageless intimacies

from beneath the barrow’s mound

that speak in voices sorrowful but proud: 

“When we had life, the world was quieter.

We had the time and space to stop

and stand here on this winsome ridge

to view a world that we had not created.

Here the wolf could roam

and find a peaceful sanctuary

amongst the shadows of the trees.

Then we shared with wolves,

and all the creatures of the woods,

the bounty that renewed with every year.

In those days giants walked the earth

and though we did not know them,

we felt their presence

and could see their works,

for our eyes were open then,

instead of filled with dirt,

or closed, as yours are now,

to all the wonders of the world.”

The path is little-trodden now,

except by those who need to seek

the solace of an open mind,

clear of all the affectations

that crowd our every waking hour

and chase us even

into the haunted depths of sleep.

Perhaps I’ll meet you on the pathway,

coming either from the rising sun

or from the shadow regions of the moon,

and we will stop and gaze at one another,

as if the two of us

each had met a ghost.

 

 

WINTER SOLSTICE - 21st DECEMBER 2013

Winter Solstice - 21^st December 2013

The eyelids of the elder year have drooped and closed

as it slowly sank into inexorable and welcome slumber.

Now there’s a calming softness in the half-light of the new day.

On the surface of the lane the frostiness of dawn

reflects the shyly-peeping sun,

like tarnished silver fused in a mackerel-skin sky

where still lurks the shadow

of the half-spent moon.

The sycamore by the farmhouse is oblivious to errant rooks

discussing weighty matters,

and from which a loud triumvirate departs

to issue stern decrees.

On an ancient oak, noted for its breadth of years,

orange leaves still cling tenaciously to sapless branches

before they join the sour cowl that shelters seeds of life,

fully-filled, like the whole earth,

with the promise of rebirth.

 

 

AUTUMN - EARLY MORNING

Autumn – Early Morning

The watchman rook awakes his kin,

slumbering in the nearby communal copse,

eager to debate the doings of the day.

From the hedgerow’s cover,

a silly harlequin-clad pheasant,

oblivious to the coming guns,

shrieks like a rusty wheelbarrow

to mock the hungry fox, now gone to ground.

The curving edge of earth’s horizon

is haloed by a ghostly glow

before the shy sun slowly shows itself,

reflecting in the covering of cloud

only a dim replica of dawning day;

but we who have known darkness

will welcome, once again,

even the shadow-semblance of light.

THE VOICE OF TREES.

This is something a bit experimental.

The Voice of Trees

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The forest speaks with the voice of trees which we, with partial or oblivious minds struggle but imperfectly to hear, while in the gentle flickering of sun through leaves a shadow dances in time to the primordial tune. O, lovely dancer, moving with the grace of years, you can hear the singing of the trees. You learned your steps with that sound ringing in your ears; you moved in sempiturnal harmony with the spirit of the woods, when stag-headed Cernunnos sat and watched from the shadows and lusted after your innocence, as raven-feathered Morrigan looked on in jealous rage and plotted her revenge. Here, time and space conspire to create a sonorous enormity: all encompassing; a vital essence that contains the whole tonality of life itself. But we see none of this. We struggle to hear anything… …except, perhaps, an echo that might come to us in quiet contemplation when we try to empty our dull minds in order to complete the link. Then, in the softening moontime a different dancer comes, her visage pale as death, her dance grotesque with gestures of demise. The forest dwellers revere her - she holds no fear for them - but we who live inside the pale are frozen with temerity as we give up our spirits and fall like empty husks, unconscious to the ground. But now there is another dancer, stepping from the shadows to bring the simple message of the trees that was always there, singing with the wind in treetops and buried under years of fallen leaves -   there for all who were empowered to listen to their ever-changing chant. This gentle dance is easy to understand: learn the lesson, now, that nothing exists for its own sake, but as a total harmony that is greater than itself.

 

THE TIME OF PARTING

The time of parting.

Now is the time to leave the hills

and the summer shades of woodland

where we have lived by shadows,

searching for rare gods

on paths of our own making.

We are no longer bound there

to the earth that holds our dead.

Now is the time of parting

from that half-imagined land

where the very act of speaking

places us apart –

we, the outsiders,

looking in upon a world

where we do not belong

Returning to the garden,

a place of our creation,

we join with Nature

in a solemn contract,

feeling, perhaps,

that for a moment only,

she will accede to our control.

Here there is ground to dig –

sweet soil to feel

that’s fresh and full of life,

whose pure and rich potential

we crumble in our hands.

See! Here there will be beans,

here lettuces and chard,

here garlic,

pungent and lavish-tasting

to mix with fragrant herbs.

In a garden Nature’s vastness is condensed:

feckless roses climb,

but grasped by honeysuckle’s pointing fingers,

and only with our blessing will the foxgloves

exceed their given space.

In this domain the wind is gentler

than when it shakes the beeches

or blows the sea to waves,

and bees and birds and dragonflies

find pleasure in the calm. 

But we make a garden only where we dwell

and, in dwelling, must relinquish

the very freedom that we crave.

Still we hear the echo of the forest,

bringing memories of stranger things

that live in other worlds,

and though the garden’s sanctuary

is made for blessed rest,

still we long for woodlands and for hills.