O'er stone paths the roses grow still as a ditty,
  When light lamps are paling the ripe summer oil;
  With a noise that the left ear blocks rushed in a hurry,
The hawthorns are fierce, till the black thorns are pretty.

Where the mind is at once full of peace, full of pieces,
  In shrubs there are stubs made from wagtails and hen,
  Tin, copper, unfathomed: a marvellous city,
In comfort the day loses its din as it ceases.

  Skimming at milk with the tightest lipped marrow,
Left hands, right lobes singed, as it curdles to putty;
  The bones of the fair-folk are lost in the morrow,

And our hands meet the roses, so we'll grasp them in pity.
Our four feet go kicking, at that hard wall we're sitting;
But the hawthorns are wet, and the hawthorns are sticky.

I saw my world again through your eyes
As I would see it again through your children's eyes.
Through your eyes it was foreign.
Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens,
A mystery of peculiar lore and doings.
Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes
Emerged at a point of exclamation
As if it had appeared to dinner guests
In the middle of the table. Common mallards
Were artefacts of some unearthliness,
Their wooings were a hypnagogic film
Unreeled by the river. Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water. You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy.
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester road.
I ****** the throaty thin woe of a rabbit
Out of my wetted knuckle, by a copse
Where a tawny owl was enquiring.
Suddenly it swooped up, splaying its pinions
Into my face, taking me for a post.

Where do birds go at night?
When winter's silent furies
turn Hawthorns white,
cotton light on ground and grade.

Where do birds sleep till dawn
while pillowing clouds, twice height,
slumber across this evening sky.

Where do birds go to dream?
Swirling, feathered flurries,
to shiver off frostbite extreme.

Then upon a morning light
to round and wakeful nigh
with muffled wings burst into flight
tree branch waved goodbye.

-cec

To-night retired, the queen of heaven
  With young Endymion stays;
And now to Hesper it is given
Awhile to rule the vacant sky,
Till she shall to her lamp supply
  A stream of brighter rays.

Propitious send thy golden ray,
  Thou purest light above!
Let no false flame ****** to stray
Where gulf or steep lie hid for harm;
But lead where music’s healing charm
  May soothe afflicted love.

To them, by many a grateful song
  In happier seasons vow’d,
These lawns, Olympia’s haunts, belong:
Oft by yon silver stream we walk’d,
Or fix’d, while Philomela talk’d,
  Beneath yon copses stood.

Nor seldom, where the beechen boughs
  That roofless tower invade,
We came, while her enchanting Muse
The radiant moon above us held:
Till, by a clamorous owl compell’d,
  She fled the solemn shade.

But hark! I hear her liquid tone!
  Now Hesper guide my feet!
Down the red marl with moss o’ergrown,
Through yon wild thicket next the plain,
Whose hawthorns choke the winding lane
  Which leads to her retreat.

See the green space: on either hand
  Enlarged it spreads around:
See, in the midst she takes her stand,
Where one old oak his awful shade
Extends o’er half the level mead,
  Enclosed in woods profound.

Hark! how through many a melting note
  She now prolongs her lays:
How sweetly down the void they float!
The breeze their magic path attends;
The stars shine out; the forest bends;
  The wakeful heifers graze.

Whoe’er thou art whom chance may bring
  To this sequester’d spot,
If then the plaintive Siren sing,
O softly tread beneath her bower
And think of Heaven’s disposing power,
  Of man’s uncertain lot.

O think, o’er all this mortal stage
  What mournful scenes arise:
What ruin waits on kingly rage;
How often virtue dwells with woe;
How many griefs from knowledge flow;
  How swiftly pleasure flies!

O sacred bird! let me at eve,
  Thus wandering all alone,
Thy tender counsel oft receive,
Bear witness to thy pensive airs,
And pity Nature’s common cares,
  Till I forget my own.

I was tired and seated next to the window.
Things passed away. Images of Albion.
Ironically I was approaching the Hawthorns
As I sat next to this window, half asleep.

In my right ear a melody played about
Some form of unrequited love.
I was hurting. She’d left recently.
And just like that I was in the jewellery quarter.

Things move so very quickly
Things come and go and never stay
Things are born and die and all we can do
Is watch and watch and watch and watch.

I was tired and sat next to the window
Feeling lost, half asleep and lonely.
In front of me, a woman read a self help book
And I wanted to scream to her

ITS NOT REAL, ITS NOT REAL.
THE ONLY THING THAT THING
HAS OR WILL GIVE YOU IS
A DEBT OF SEVEN NINTY NINE.

As I thought this,
I glimpsed someone pass through the aisle
A blonde in a beret, and she looked
Terribly sad. Like something had happened.

Suddenly, I was in the hawthorns
And she’d left the carriage.
I’ll never see her again.

My palms rest
Upon the blackened trunk
Of a melancholy hawthorn
It's choked wood crumbling
Into dust
Falling between my fingers

I rest the side of my face
My good ear listening
For the tree's whispered secrets...

Through the tunnels of my ear
The plucking of a lute...
The kind voice of a lone minstrel....
Is echoed in every
Corner of my mind
Promising eternal memory

The minstrel sits under a tree
The same tree whose burned
Breast stands against my face
Only a thousand years in the past
When the hawthorns skin
Was a gold brown tan
Fresh and beautiful
When pink and white blossoms
Grew amongst its green leaves
Fresh and beautiful
When the young hawthorn's
Memory was still young
Fresh and beautiful....

The old minstrel
sat with his gnarled back
Against the hawthorn's body
Willow wood lute in hand
Face lined with
Twelve thousand wrinkles
White beard long and weathered
Old eyes conversing
With the overhanging branches

The old minstrel plucks the
Gut strings of his lute
As if plucking kisses
From a **** lover...
The lute
Being the minstrel's
Only companion
So many years....
Returning from the hawthorn's
Memory of the past
It drew tears from
My closed eyes

I kiss the burned
Body of the old tree...
Tasting ashes on my wet lips

I embrace the tree
All my love pouring through
This embrace
As if we were making love
Under the stormy
Smoky sky

With the ending sighs
Of my lungs
The hawthorn's
Last flow of water
The remaining embers
Burning black and blood red
Engulf both our bodies
Our wailing voices
Echoing for days....

All that is left
Two piles
Of gray ashes
One to keep the other company
In this melancholy
World....

The Magical Date
Last nite was a celebration!
And before it all begun
He held me by my hand so close
We were off to leprechaun land!

The naughty elf with his impish pranks
His sinful teases and wanton ways
His playful gestures, fractious delights
He rushed me off to his wilful fays

We found ourselves in a Keatsian bower
In 'embalmed darkness', '**** 'white hawthorns'
It was fragrant with the jasmine veils
That covered the roof of rosy thorns

we laughed and sang old happy numbers
we talked our hearts out gleefully
After aeons of blue moon we'd finally met
A magical date it had to be!

And so when i looked up to his eyes
It held mine in a purple gaze
In a trice of a second he was off with me
Speeding through the verduous maze

Help! i cried but held on tight
Our windswept hair, our amorous plight
His fervour, vigor, force and power
Was all i felt that wondrous night

Elf or gnome, genie or sprite
A naughty brownie or the nisse vampire
Bogie, goblin, fairy, nymph
He carried me through the forests dire...

So just wen I can close my eyes
Just when i feel im missing him
He's there as he says hes there with me
Off we go into the woodlands dim

We dance a waltz, a salsa true
A foxtrot, a ballet in embrace tight
In white moonshine, in purple rain
When dewdrops catch the morning light.

And then again with every dawn
The magic wanes, the elf resigns
To mossy groves and sylvan lands
And the elfin grottos of my mind.

Snapdragons are one of those
flowers that wilt in springtime, not
because there is
anything wrong, it's just
that their season is over.

I wonder whether
snapdragons ever fall
in love with the hawthorns,
though I really shouldn't
have to.

I know all too well the
feeling of having to love
someone perennially as
you both alternate dying,
for lack of rain,
for want of sun.

That beautiful Wind as it howls from the pass
Blowing tussock in waves across hillocks of grass,
Causing red leaves to billow in curtains of fall
To gather in windrows beneath the stone wall,
Where the zephyrs play mischief in colour and swirl
And cascades of leafage fly skyward and whirl.

And the hawthorns sway in that beautiful way
And the reeds all bend in the lake
Where the concentric rings caused by raindrops and things
Cause the surface to shimmer and shake.

That beautiful Wind as it streams through the trees
Brings a tear to my eyes, makes me weak at the knees,
For the patterns of movement, the rhythmical sway
And the roar of the torrent in leafage at play.
And the impact of raindrops, so fresh on my face,
Make me laugh at the wonder of this special place.

And the starlings all heel with immaculate feel
As in thousands, they flock to the trees,
Where with cochophanous joy in full voice they employ
A concierto of birdsong to please

That beautiful Wind when it plays with the clouds
Where the mares tails extend in such glorious shrouds,
Then in furious plight, usually just before night,
Nimbo cumulous flashes electrify bright,
Where the lightening bolt snakes, from on high, where it makes
A most thunderous roar through the sky as it breaks.

With the wind in my hair and without single care
I celebrate Wind with delight
With the sound of the breeze blowing cottonwood trees
And my day turning beautifully night.

Marshalg
Inspired by "The Last Winds" a poem by K, Daniel Little Paw McCreight
@ the Pukehana Paradise
Epsom
23 March 2013

Spring has sprung gold
The creek croaks a tune of a mans toll
Trees strum chords of a maidens soul
Mountains chime and gardens bell a life untold
The doe eyes of beauty paw at rooted passions  
It must be the velvet of her skin encased and ashen
Perhaps the silk on her breath a porcelain vase
The valley bows at a hawthorns grace Crowned in an ivys vine
A queen deserves a rose of red wine

You woo me deep
into the ecstasy of your pristine chasteness...

where dry leaves of Aspen and Beech and Birch
sussurate to the music of a lazy breeze,

where Hummingbirds
**** in frenzy
nectar from the orange glees
of the flame-of-the-forest trees,

where Hawthorns
lure the breeze
to weave its vibrance
in their domes of green glory,

where shrunken streams
bask in their white pebbly flourish.

Like an enchantress,
you lure me to the depth of your
rapturous bliss!

To say farewell, my heart pains.
I leave a beat of my heart
to ramble with the roving breeze
perennially in your alluring meadows!

Near Derrington in country lanes
where hawthorns rest as Autumn wanes.

The redwings come and take their fill
gorge on berries ‘gainst Winter’s chill.

The cattle low and chew the cud
a weasel kills and draws fresh blood.

Carp to bottoms of ponds descend
as fields adopt their Winter trend.

A fox or two may yet appear
circling buzzards in skies so clear.

Though both are on the hunt for food
death in nature can seem so crude.

A toad may croak across the pond
hidden from view by reedy frond.

An hour one spends amidst all this
Rewards the soul with utter bliss.



©Joe Wilson – In country lanes… 2014

in a field of long grass,
bronzed by the gold's of the sun,
the wildflowers grow,
far from the blue mists of the sea,

dark root and thundering air,
the hawthorns blossom silently
they are everywhere, white clouds
like drops of moon against the sky

as if the lonely dance of the skies
was a heart-beat, was your love,
as if the sky could not be more beautiful
with the sun, the wildflowers and your love.

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 10/30/2019

You love your home, family home,
that every summer night, through silver mist,
with rustle of its linden trees accompanies your dreams,
and with silence soothes your tears?

You love your home, this old roof that tells a tale
about long-forgotten past and olden days,
family threshold of moss-covered entrance doors,
that warmly greets you after every long hard road?

You love your home, a refreshing aroma of golden grain
and grasses in the morning freshly cut,
of moist alders high and red roses wild,
that weave flowers into hawthorns' green thick hair?

You love your home, this forest dark,
that noise of its powerful songs
and ghosts moaning, and winds choir,
is pouring into your ever-restless blood?

You love your home, family home,
that amongst storms, in days of doubt,
when the thunder hits your soul,
with its memory saves you like a protective shield?

But if you truly love, and if you truly want
to live under this roof, to eat bread of grains,
guard thresholds so dear to you with your heart,
and lay your heart among beloved walls! ...

Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910)

When a gravedigger
mourns―
the impasse ends.
A robot turns on the rains.

With horror, you release
the doves to reach for
olive branches for peace.

Paraplegic, the horse
will not run― on hawthorns.
King was decapitated.

You talk to your seers
sleeping six feet down in earth
to explain the genocide―

of unborn fathers, when
they were praying
headdown for downpour.

I want to sell my
thoughts, to feed my heart. Do not
come near the volcano.Lava is still hot.

The king was slaughtered
amids hawthorns. No one loves him after
death. I quote Kafka. Love comes back.

The fallibility is the truth.
Bones break, but the body
still runs like a jaguar.