Before The Sun Sets

Pen & Wash Sketch – based on ‘Ancient Trees’ – to mark National Trust Week 1999 . . .  WHB

The crisp crunch of my footsteps as I crossed that frosty field
Confirmed to me the joy that winter brings;
The frail but wondrous sunlight burning through the morning mist
Affirmed a world of wonder in all things.

It brought to me a memory of those long days of my youth,
When all was young and all life was tomorrow,
When time and love and right and wrong were not things I considered,
Just the lasting joy which Nature can bestow.

Tomorrow was a world away from the life that I live now;
No anguish that my world might cease to be
Before I’d felt and savoured all that life can have to offer,
Before the sun sets on that ancient tree.

Despite my knowledge of the pain that’s in the world around me,
Bleak Nature seeks to calm its shifting shadows,
The seasons, sun, the starlight, still remain to bring us hope,
That vital spark from which renewed life flows.

CHERITA #2

My second experiment with the poetic form – The CHERITA . . .

‘Cherita’ is the Malay word for story or tale. A cherita consists of a single stanza of a one-line verse, followed by a two-line verse, and then finishing with a three-line verse. It can be written solo or with up to three partners.  (See the website at:   https://www.thecherita.com for further information).

2.

The wind rustled the branches.

The bird held tight,
Swaying with its motion,

Another bird landed beside her
She flew off
To find her own branch.

Treenware

 

 Of a tree
transmogrified
the resurrected dead
felled to humanity’s purpose
nature sampled
purposed flotsam
birthed by inspiration
gathered and garnished
tortured timber
carved and hewn
pared and whittled
twisted turned and polished
into burled jewels
ornamental gems
passed over life re-modelled
re-moulded into a new existence
allowed to live again
in resurrected splendour
through the craftsman’s art

Time best-spent
in re-creating beauty
from death’s discarded bones

 

 

 

Indomitable

If you hit me I will bruise,
Cut me down, I’ll cry,
Take my limbs,
They’ll multiply,
Always I will death defy.

Fire and flood I will resist,
And never give up hope;
Eventually I’ll rejuvenate,
Whatever comes I’ll cope.

For Nature built me to succeed,
Never to give in;
Mutilate me, I will bleed,
But never will give in.

 

‘Rejuvenating Tree’ – Surrey, England … Photos: WHB – May 2020   ©

 

Nature’s Green Magician

‘The Green Man’ WHB – Pencil … 2020

If the world was sane,
If I could live again,
I’d choose to be a tree –
A sturdy oak for me.

And when I was that oak
The Green Man I’d invoke,
To be my guiding light –
Upright, downright, forthright.

For his eternal mission,
Nature’s Green Magician,
To nurture, guide, conserve,
Our future to preserve.

 

Two Word Tales – #6. Car Crash

Photo by Aleksandr Neplokhov on Pexels.com

 

Car Crash

New car
Big load
Too fast
Old road

At speed
Strike hole
Burst tyre
Own goal

Hit tree
Sore head
Bruised knee
Not dead

No claims
Stiff joints
Bad luck
Six points

 

My ‘Two Word’ Verses

Number six  in my series of short verses 

 

The Dead Tree

Photo: WHB, 2019  … Knighthayes, Tiverton, Devon  ©

Bold and boastful,
Big and brash,
A mighty marvel still.
A splendid giant
Holding court
Bestride that verdant hill.

Imperious, noble,
Still a lord
Of field and hill and view.
Its commanding presence
Memorial to
All that once was new.

Never forlorn,
The strength of years
Still lingers in those limbs.
A memory,
A masterpiece,
Even as the vision dims.

And the Dead Tree Gives no Shelter

Photo:  WHB … 2019

 

The tree had fallen
Rotting remains now
As the rain 
The wind 
devour its bark
Dam its life stream
Yet still it nurtures life 
Home for beetle colonies to breed
For fungi to succeed

Rotted matted carcass
This sorbate matter
Feeds a frenzy
Of insect life
Foreign matter
Now acceptable
Powdered matter
Now both home
And sustenance
Renewable energy
Nature’s liturgy

Life in Death
To turn a phrase
That has to be
Nature’s best call
Perpetuating the present
In the past
Creating a new future
In an old landscape

N.B.  The title of this poem is taken from T.S.Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’.
‘1. The Burial of the Dead’, beginning … ‘April is the cruellest month …’

The Subservient Moon

Each day
The rising sun
chases the moon away
To hide its limpid light
From the brightness of day.
Cowed in its lair
Within the darkness
Of its sylvan hideaway,
Preferring to lie
With the leaves
And squirrels
And, as Clytie,
Watch the skies,
Following Helios’s chariot,
Gazing as he
Arcs the heavens,
Jealous of his power,
Fearful of his revenge
Were she ever to show her face
In his presence.
Ever allowing her nemesis
To hold sway
Over the new day,
Commanding the attention of the world
And continuing his journey;
The dominant presence
In the cerulean sky.

When is the moon not a moon? 
… When it is sunlight in a circular mirror. 

The three photographs are of a reflection in a window of daylight, itself reflected in a circular mirror and back onto the glass of the window.
All photographs by me – March 2017 … Roland (WHB)