Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Dom Mar 19
As the days grow long,
Find me verdant resplendence
Surrounded by arboreal critters,
Birds singing in their jazz sessions
And all that muck carried with it’s baggage
Evaporates into the ether.

Here a gentle breeze-
Brings the susurrus of leaves
Sounding like waves hitting the shore
We can get lost in dendritic umbrage
Walking these beaten paths to find
Solace in the sylvan -
Our own Eden if only for fleeting little moments.

Moments caught in a photograph, ethereal -
Looking back at all the light and love therein
Clarity pokes through the dark of thought
Crepuscular stars align in the shape of a heart
Consolation in constellations,
Diamonds for your soul for surviving the rough
Here in the calm of nature blooms incipient
Flowers' color and scent -
As a morrow’s dew spreads the perfume
I am home at last.
PERTINAX Mar 5
There she laid down her wearied head
To rest one final time under the shade
‘O the wiry willow

Beneath, her thoughts spun webs of distant times past
Where honeysuckle wrapped tendrils round
The rugged walnut

Smells of various mountain flowers after a fresh rain
Accompanied the familiar tune of birds singing
An ode to the swaying oaks  

A soft breeze warmed the chill of biting winters cold
Sending shivers down her frail frame
Skeletal like the barren birch

She blinked in time to barking angry squirrels
Displeased with the lack of fruit
Left by the poor pawpaw  

Vision, already blurred by cataract, began to fade
As the mountain consumed the setting sun
The light filtered by forlorn firs

It was time.  

Long had she waited to join those that had gone before
Patient to be reunited with her love long lost
During the spring of blooming dogwood

Distant, she could see him, strong and proud
With effort she reached out to her beloved
A mighty hickory  

Exhaling, she breathed her last.

After her life, Diana, goddess of the forest
Let grow a grove of various mountain trees
Surrounding a single rhododendron  

Her life, a monument to the nature she loved.
Jack Groundhog Nov 2024
Stuck on blackened spikes
and under stormy seas.
“Let’s go for a hike,”
my wife said to me.

Her sliver of sunlight
breaks through my fog,
a sparkling invite
to go for a little jog.

On a bed of autumn leaves
and crisp wisps of dew
the trees us receive
while I from black withdrew.
Jason Drury Aug 2024
What is love,
if not told to the heavens?
What I feel for you,
is locked deep in the ocean.
The more I know you,
the Deeper I go into your forest.
What I want is not empty,
like weathered plains.
It’s not murky nor dead,
as I step through your swampy past.
It’s whole and true,
as the smell of rain in April.
Its beauty is among the sun,
in spring.
All I want for you,
for us.
Is an adventure,
of love everlasting.
Strying Oct 2022
I open my eyes
to see a sun so bright
up on this mountaintop
I find a rock and stand up
I breathe in, as the dust picks up
the wind of life
carries my body away tonight
HII, I really want to go hiking :)
Hope y'all are having an amazing day <3
Of getting lost and finding ways

Hitting dead-ends

But treading along

With new found resilience

Strength of character

Delving into the depths

Of one’s core

Embracing the fall and the cracks

Soul searching

Gliding

Through each passing day
Dave Robertson Jan 2022
Well, ol’ boy
stood in the vista, a little lost
but feet finding the pub
nonetheless

that sun tried to make its point
which, though we acknowledged,
we tried to sidestep

clag mud added heavy boots
while loose, happy chat sat
in apotheosis

til a moussaka
and a couple of sublime fish dishes
let us sit down and rest

after miles
these muscles pretend to ache
nick armbrister Jan 2022
An Awful Harvest

I went a hike up to Wawa in Montalban and up the mountain roads. Here I was to go past the peaks of Mt Parawagan, Susong Dalaga and Mt Lagyo plus others. The road had been improved by engineers with trucks and plant equipment. I wanted to hike a big circle right back to the beginning. This was possible a few months ago but not now due to the building of the Pamitinan Dam. It will take four years to do this and flood a complete valley near the peaks. A guard told me no entry by the construction site. I talked to a head engineer and he told me more details. The dam will be eighty metres tall or deep more than the Kaliwa Dam of sixty four metres. These are big structures. Hikers wanted to hike from Wawa to Casili by the newly improved mountain roads but the dam construction stopped this. In time a new road will be built above the dam level replacing the old road. Even if the road is built in a year the dam will still be unfinished so still no entry.



I saw a sign saying beware of UXO Unexploded Ordnance. A local man told me about this, of how the military was looking for it and would defuse any found. His details matched much of what I’ve heard before, like finding shrapnel in the soil. The sign was for the road improvement and dam construction. Sleeping shells waited to knocked awake and ****.



The digger, bulldozer and plant drivers need to be paid danger money. No joke. The area they work on is a small part of a huge World War 2 battlefield. An awful harvest litters the land with unexploded ordnance being buried in the soil having not detonated. Mortars, shells, bombs and other things; these all need locating and safely defusing by the military.



People live in the area and many have found live or exploded shells. The live shells are complete and the spent ones are in varied sized pieces. On my hike up there I was given a piece of one five five millimetre shell from a local. This was in two parts, the biggest weighed many pounds. I estimate between one in four and six fired never exploded. On the stone mountains like Mt Lagyo the shells and bombs will explode on impact if the detonators are triggered. In soil covered peaks the shells can just dig in and don’t go off. The army went up to Mt Lagyo looking for unexploded ordnance. They found nothing.



The road that has been improved and widened would’ve yielded many unexploded munitions. I’m curious how many were found and wonder how many thousands still hide unfound. Sections of the trees/grass by the road are taped off. This is for safety of any munitions and also due to the steepness of the terrain.



The local people within the valley are being moved away and compensated for thus upheaval. Their valley will be inundated by what is now a small river in coming years. Any remaining homes and unfound munitions or Japanese tunnels will be underwater.



Every time I hike the area from Wawa to Mt Mataba to Timberland to Casili I read about or am told or shown evidence from the war and battles; that old actions from 1945 has outlived the people of that time be it locals or soldiers. History is not old and boring black and white photos. An rusty Arisaka rifle with working bolt or blasted shell fragments tell more than any story or photo ever could. Only fate and God knows the unnamed soldiers names now.



When the dam is built I wonder how many unfound unexploded ordnance and dead Japanese soldiers will be now forever unfound? I suspect many thousand Japanese soldiers are buried on those peaks. Remember, these hills are the first high ground above Manila. This was the start of the high ground battles that went on for hundreds of miles at several huge mountain ranges. It was Tier 1 fighting equal to anywhere involving hundreds of thousands of opposing troops, of which tens of thousands were killed.



Now the 1945 legacy is coming back to bite us. Not just buried shells on a dam construction site but the risk of them still exploding when not even found. This is due to corroding fuses. Buried bombs in Europe have self detonated several times. I’ve been told of two large unexploded warplane dropped bombs, one near Timberland and the other near Mt Parawagan. Both need to be found again and professionally defused. History is never boring; the lethal harvest is a testimony to their dastardly deeds.


Mark Toney May 2021
hardwood memories
well-rooted, time-tested, safe
~ hiking in mind's woods






Mark Toney © 2021
Poetry form: Haiku - Mark Toney © 2021
Next page