For this week, I am attempting this bravery thing once again, so here is a poem I wrote last year which I rediscovered last week. I’ve got a few others in the pipelines at the moment as well, but I find summer is a hard season for the writing of poetry. It all gets lost in endless hot days and the relentless race to keep up with the plant harvest! Still and all, here is the one I wanted to share today. I hope that you enjoy it!
Gossip from the Trees
Birch led the way first –
trembling with eagerness, quicksilver,
snowdrops underfoot, speaking
crystalline songs of beginnings, and joy,
and surging sap beating the bounds,
silver lady ever first in the new lands,
and Rowan echoed her, garbed
in red berries and fierceness, and blood,
always blood, jewelling her boughs, speaking
of strength and pride and witch nature,
hasty to the fight, fierce,
while Alder counselled patience, the boundaries
between fire and water, the need for balance,
always the shield between fire’s quick nature and water’s
slow wisdom.
Pine had little to say, but said it well, leading
always by example, beads of fragrant amber
jewelling her bark, showing the beauty of winter,
and slow moving days, silence when it is needed.
Oak spoke then, measured and strong,
roots deep in the earth, leaves and boughs
that withstand the strongest storm
and yet willow, always bending with the winds and rarely breaking,
counselled pliance, endurance, as she always does,
gazing at her own reflection in
the riverwater, dotted with gilded lilies and green leaves,
and knowing always the difference between
waltzing with the storm, and merely withstanding it.
And beneath them all, bramble trembled, toothed and weary,
loving always those princes too well as they
fight through to the buried castle,
reaching to clasp vines with the rose who
reflects the princess in her tower,
rose pink, sun gold, always beautiful.
And I, rootless tree that I am, speak always and ever of joy,
impermanence, transience, mankind’s
short years, the transition through seasons,
and my leaves are tales
lost in the telling, returning always to earth.
Beautiful Ali!
Thank you 😀 I don’t seem to write much poetry in the summer… seems to be an autumn and winter thing for me, maybe because at this time of year I’m usually outside and any words written in my head tend to clear off again before I can write them down! 😀
i’ve just come across your blog, it’s really beautiful. well done for being brave enough to publish your poem! it resonates for me with taliesin’s battle of the trees, but i’m glad that the trees speak to us of joy instead of marching to war these days…
Oh bless you, thank you very much! 😀 That means a great deal!
oh good! the old sources still inspire. i’ve added a link for this blog on my own… (thoughtsfromtheroots.wordpress.com) … i suspect that we are occasionally in the same corners of the earth, at gatherings and the like… perhaps one day we shall meet.