Whenever a man makes play for a woman

He gets what he gets and he takes what he can.

When man takes all he can, all the best gets mislaid.

When woman and man run freely together

The sun’s in the sky and wine in the weather

Opening gates on leafy ways

Through which love’s healing sunlight plays.

I love my trees; they listen so intent to all my thoughts.

Trees in Summer

Trees in summer are paradise green

Resting not idly on the grass under the tree’s canopy

Watching clouds float across the sky not wasting time

The trees refreshed us as a long wave of warmth crossed our bodies

And then a flooding sea of desert heat

The relentless song of the cicadas, the work of a dry voice beyond death

Mortal in its phenomenology, but immortal in its power

The silence of shimmering veins of air

Personal clouds stagnate and hang

Only trees and breezes abate the clang of despair.

I love my trees; they listen so intent to all my thoughts.

Trees in Spring

Snowdrops, dots of brightness shining in the winter gloom, harbingers of spring

Its lamp-shade-like form a celebration of winter’s end

Buds appear as trees are still devoid of leaves

Nights are shorter and days are longer

The Rosacea and Prunus trees burst into pink and white bloom

From the boughs of a cherry tree, bloom falls like a shower of confetti

A reminder that summer is just around the corner.

I love my trees; they listen so intent to all my thoughts.

Trees in Winter

Their naked forms stand starkly against the sky,

Almost like charcoal outlines.

Clusters of twigs, gnarled and twisted, extend like the hands of a very old man

Dark cracks lie in the bark, each woody crevice a scar marking the years

Violent gusts move the cracking, creaking branches

My trees are squeaking, groaning, screeching,

As the cold enters their freezing sap, a shattering gunshot sound,

The bark splits and my trees want to explode.

I love my trees; they listen so intent to all my thoughts.

Trees in Autumn

Autumn paints vivid shades of yellow, orange, and red

A palette of yellow gold, rusty red, scarlet, and russet, 

Crisp sunburnt leaves flutter peacefully in the autumn breeze

Float down to the ground where they scurry along hurried by the wind

Swept into burnished copper and ferrous red heaps

We leap into their piles kicking them around just to hear that rustling sound

Before the wind and rain stick them forever to the ground

A glistening bitter brown, black chocolate death

Where the worms abound.

Bitter wind, cold sleet, and rain

A pain of a day

Fitful gleams from a half-heart diluted sun

Really not much fun

Tempers tried till they nearly crack

Wondering why you ever came?

The gusts of wind clean out your mind as you homeward wend

There are good days coming when bad days end.

Everybody has got memories
But I couldn’t remember anything
Remembering is painful,
Hard as the clear blue sky under which I lay for three hours.

My memory is white as snow and fuzzy
The snow seeped into my clothes
As I looked up at that hard, clear, blue sky
From the bottom of the foul smelling muddy ditch.

I had been hit and had fallen into the ditch
My body bumped from the saline green verge
Into the putrefactious pit.

The hedgerow was bare except for some berries
It was a criss-cross of prickly branches,
The thorns clearly visible like spiky railings
Further along grew an enormous pendunculate oak
Black birds perched ominously on the oak.

The only sound was the rushing traffic going south,
A monotonous noise that the bare hedge could not muffle
The cars were piled up on the main northbound road
And the radio and the heater were the only companions
That had kept us warm.

Three of Nature’s Many Interludes

Prelude

Here along the motorway to the moor and the Western sea
My old car reverberates in ceaseless monotony,
A lonely rider, as the miles grow long,
To ease the burden of his thoughts, makes song.

Interlude 1

How the Springtide lilt from the song-bird’s throat
As he carols on topmost tree
Thrills sweet and clear through the listening air
In rapturous melody.

The delicate green of the larch
Between the red cone seeds of pines
The sunlight glints over the woodland tints
And through the beech leaf shines.

Wild cherry blossom and bluebells,
Golden gorse and broom
Far away from foul urban smells where flowers,
Who fashion the scented bloom, dare not dwell.

A startled heron hies
From off the lake
Flapping with ease through the neighbouring trees
Where the garrulous jay-bird cries.

A sudden dash, a flirt and a flash
And a finch’s note is mute;
The hawk is gone and the sun shines on
Nor hushed is the blackbird’s flute.

Blue sky, clear stream, bird’s song, fresh air,
And the distant hum of the rolling wheel
All mingle and twine their joy with mine
As I yield to their fond appeal.

Interlude 2

A silver aspen traced against the sky,
With sombre background of dark firs between
The great twin elms beneath whose branches lie
Cool hidden places where bluebells have been.

A many tiered and tasselled Deodar
Lifting imperial summit to the sun
Above the gravel where Zephyr’s chariot parks
Which so much and so many has undone.

The Western garden where Dracaenas grow
And scent the whole dominion with their flowers;
An unkempt glade where, when the breezes blow,
The daffodils give nod to fleeting hours.

A shady woodland walk beneath the lime
And long neglected lilacs, grown too tall;
The copper beech that in the summer’s prime
Entices to daydreams and slumber-fall.

A little pool where frog and goldfish dwell,
With stones from Italy and mosswork set;
Magnolia glade; the never-failing well;
Two prim Juniperus hibernica,
Two drunken Cryptomeria elegans,
The music of a blackcap’s aria
Behind the palm tree’s many-fingered fans.

Sequoia and Scotch pine red limed and tall
Mingle with foliage of oak and beech
From whose high tops the old crows’ morning call
My wakening ear through pane and pillow reach.

Full bloom Syringas in their bridal dress
With golden balls of ripening Budleia play
And young birds in a new found happiness
Make on their untried wings their first essay.

The Oleander of my childhood stands
Before the porch and in the sun kissed air
The dormant bud, so long delayed expands;
At last, the flower is there.

Interlude 3

Down from the moor where the curlew clamours
And my wildlings dance to the songs I sing,
Where dreams of wealth and the world’s proud glamours
Are proven but vainest imagining.

Leaping the boulders, dreamily drifting
Over the shallows to wake again
With onward swirl the white foam-flakes rifting
I hasten down to the distant plain.

In some peat-brown pool now my current tarries,
In whose mossy marges my creatures hide
From the watchful hem, when their hunger harries
The truant troutlings that ride my tide.

As down through the shadows I swiftly travel
To plunge in glee over the boulders grey
The sunlight caught on the golden gravel
Escapes again as I glide away.

On the wastes of silence the night returning
Attunes to her music the attentive ear
With the iterant drone of the nightjar’s churring,
Rising and falling now far, now near.

Through all the seasons and every hour:
Morning and evening, noon and night,
Radiant sunshine or mist and cloud,
Turbid with snow-drift, or clear and bright.

Chanting my paean of praise eternal,
Through bracken and heather my ways I wend
Past time-worn granite and pastures vernal,
Oceanwards ever my waters trend.

With the heavens’ superb reflection,
Never was artist whose brush could bring
Picture to such perfection,
Nor poet able to utter the songs the river sings.

Postlude

I would too set my conscience free
In rhyme and rhythm hampered not by words.
Words, how they mock one, while harmonies
Bring gifts of joy, charged with unbidden tears,
That bears no load of doubt unsatisfied.

We are born to die
A good deal of disturbance on the way
With proportionately little fuss in the day to day
Coolly amused we assume many poses
Until we learn we are going to be buried under the roses
You may ask what life is worth
I think of laughter and mirth
Isn’t it fun to know we are undone at birth?

We are born to love
Love is a charmed disarray, unbridled joy
My hand explores all your shores
Desire, fire, gain and pain
Love is so short and her memory lingers so long
Because through magical nights like this I held her in my arms
My soul is lost without her
Love and die, don’t ask why.