"alder" poems
Forth into the forest straightway
All alone walked Hiawatha
Proudly, with his bow and arrows,
And the birds sang round him, o’er him,
“Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!”
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
Sang the blue bird, the Owaissa,
“Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!”
Up the oak tree, close beside him,
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
In and out among the branches,
Coughed and chattered from the oak tree,
Laughed, and said between his laughing,
“Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!”
And the rabbit from his pathway
Leaped aside, and at a distance
Sat ***** upon his haunches,
Half in fear and half in frolic,
Saying to the little hunter,
“Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!”
But he heeded not, nor heard them,
For his thoughts were with the red deer;
On their tracks his eyes were fastened,
Leading downward to the river,
To the ford across the river,
And as one in slumber walked he,
Hidden in the alder bushes.
There he waited till the deer came,
Till he saw two antlers lifted,
Saw two eyes look from the thicket,
Saw two nostrils point to windward,
And a deer came down the pathway,
Flecked with leafy light and shadow.
And his heart within him fluttered,
Trembled like the leaves above him,
Like the birch-leaf palpitated,
As the deer came down the pathway.
Then, upon one knee uprising,
Hiawatha aimed an arrow;
Scarce a twig moved with his motion,
Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled,
But the wary roebuck started,
Stamped with all his hoofs together,
Listened with one foot uplifted,
Leaped as if to meet the arrow;
Ah! the singing, fatal arrow,
Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him!
Dead he lay there in the forest,
By the ford across the river;
Beat his timid heart no longer,
But the heart of Hiawatha
Throbbed and shouted and exulted,
As he bore the red deer homeward,
And Iagoo and Nokomis
Hailed his coming with applauses.
From the red deer’s hide Nokomis
Made a cloak for Hiawatha,
From the red deer’s flesh Nokomis
Made a banquet in his honor.
All the village came and feasted,
All the guests praised Hiawatha,
Called him Strong-heart, Soan-ge-taha!
Called him Loon-Heart, Mahn-go-taysee!
9.2k
Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.
But here will sigh thine alder tree
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.
A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
5.6k
A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.
There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.
5.2k
Perch on their water perch hung in the clear Bann River
Near the clay bank in alder dapple and waver,
Perch they called ‘grunts’, little flood-slubs, runty and ready,
I saw and I see in the river’s glorified body
That is passable through, but they’re bluntly holding the
pass,
Under the water-roof, over the bottom, adoze
On the current, against it, all muscle and slur
In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air
That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world.
4.4k
In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.
2.6k
When the sun goes down
I have my first drink
standing in the yard,
talking to my neighbor
about the alder tree
rising between our houses,
a lowly tree that prospered
from our steady inattention
and shot up quick as a ****
to tower over our rooftops,
where it now brandishes
a rich, luxuriant crown.
Should we cut it down?
Neither of us wants to --
we agree that we like
the flourishing branches,
shade like thick woods.
We don't say it,
studying our tree in silence,
but we know that if the roots
get into the foundations
we've got real trouble.
John goes back inside.
Nothing to be done in summer --
not to those heavy branches.
I balance my empty glass
on top of a fence post.
In the quiet early dark,
those peaceful minutes
before dinner, I bend down
to the flower beds I love
and pull a few weeds --
something I've meant to do
all day.
2.4k
On a slow train
out of the Savannahs sudden exile,
the sunlight swallows me,
a calligraphy of days, hours, minuets, now
inscribed on my limbs,
syntax gives over to a dry, dry sound,
and parched, the aftertaste of sloe gin
inhabits my ribs, the lay of bones,
a labyrinth of absence,
and this velvet ache
at my wrists, a pure burning,
burning the memory red,
words swell and crumble with a kiss,
what absence, Soul of Winter,
what absence is this, spreading
over roadmaps, soliloquies, nights
stretch into mornings, always mornings,
as my fingertips pull daylight from an orange
in dream alphabets that soon dwindle
to vowels, the word, harbour, bends
the old alder beyond what it can bear,
so many ways, you say, to live like a prisoner,
at home, the rooms
are all windswept, reckless
chairs overturned , abandoned
in this, the evenings parable,
love is no more
than a syllable in a bottle
of shattered blue glass,
a poem written on the underside of a childs teacup,
their jump ropes curl like adders
at our feet, the thread
from where I dangle
in doorways and twilight,
as I bide time, perilous
over train tracks, your fingers
trace tally marks along my vertebrae,
the hollows darkening in a pathos
of blue rheumatism,
and in the carnivorous tremor
of my body breaking
like the spine of a book,
the paper gone pink at the edges,
like azaleas and bruises,
erosion, after all is the altar of the body,
and there are scars beneath my temple,
and this ache, still, in my wrists,
unbearable when it rains,
ghosts inhabit my lungs,
wrung from the silence of shut windows,
eternal clotheslines and linen
span for miles across the Savannah,
and the early frost is at last,
calling me home....
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 5:11 PM UTC
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee, from the hill-top looking down;
And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton tolling the bell at noon,
Dreams not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent:
All are needed by each one,
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home in his nest at even;—
He sings the song, but it pleases not now;
For I did not bring home the river and sky;
He sang to my ear; they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me;
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
And fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid
As 'mid the ****** train she strayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white quire;
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage,—
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet Truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat,—
I leave it behind with the games of youth."
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Above me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird;—
Beauty through my senses stole,
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
2.2k
I. LONELINESS
Her Word
One ought not to have to care
So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
To seem to say good-bye;
Or care so much when they come back
With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
Too glad for the one thing
As we are too sad for the other here—
With birds that fill their *******
But with each other and themselves
And their built or driven nests.
II. HOUSE FEAR
Always—I tell you this they learned—
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door night,
They. learned to leave the house-door wide
Until they had lit the lamp inside.
III. THE SMILE
Her Word
I didn’t like the way he went away.
That smile! It never came of being gay.
Still he smiled—did you see him?—I was sure!
Perhaps because we gave him only bread
And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.
Perhaps because he let us give instead
Of seizing from us as he might have seized.
Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,
Or being very young (and he was pleased
To have a vision of us old and dead).
I wonder how far down the road he’s got.
He’s watching from the woods as like as not.
IV. THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM
She had no saying dark enough
For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the window-latch
Of the room where they slept.
The tireless but ineffectual hands
That with every futile pass
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
Before the mystery of glass!
It never had been inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream
Of what the tree might do.
V. THE IMPULSE
It was too lonely for her there,
And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
And no child,
And work was little in the house,
She was free,
And followed where he furrowed field,
Or felled tree.
She rested on a log and tossed
The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
On her lips.
And once she went to break a bough
Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard.
When he called her—
And didn’t answer— didn’t speak—
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.
He never found her, though he looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother’s house
Was she there.
Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.
1.8k
On a bright and sunny day
On the 18th of May
An earthquake resulted in a landslide
That unleashed a massive force brewing inside
The eruption removed the upper 1,300 feet
The magma chamber burst- rock & gas blown at supersonic speed
Within 8 miles, all was instantly wrecked
With a shockwave so big, what could one expect?
As the north slope collapsed down
All life forms began to drown
Every tree in sight swept away
19 miles outward; a ruinous ashtray
Silence breaks as ash falls like snow
The once mature landscape now just an embryo
What had become a lifeless terrain,
Now shows us what 35 years can attain.
After the volcanic cataclysm
Biological legacies determine the pace of new ecosystems
The following colonizers proceed:
Lupines, pearly everlasting, alder shrubs, and fireweed.
The coniferous forest was replaced
The deciduous Alder trees won the race
The new forest attracts grasshoppers, birds, and ants
Larks, gophers, sparrows and deer mice take a chance
Out of 256 species alive prior to the eruption,
86 are now in production
20% of the surface is covered with grass and legumes
Struggling young trees that endeavor to bloom
Ecological gaps begin to fill
Strong ecosystems form, production is uphill.
Elk arrives to munch on grass and bark
The thick forests attract birds, like larks.
Fallen logs create nutrients and feed biofilm to the lake
Floating ecosystems now have plenty resources to take
Elevation affects the rate of recovery reports.
The higher the colder, which means the growing season is short.
The loss of trees means more room for sun
As the lake warms up, there’s increased production
More insects and bigger fish, like rainbow trout
Salamanders are scarce now, not many about.
Lupines deserve their own stanza, those purple legumes.
They help make a pumice landscape suitable for others to bloom.
Lupines create essential nutrients the pumice is low on
Other plants are thankful for the rare space to grow on.
All this information hopefully to inspire,
Life pulls through in situations most dire.
Mount Saint Helens’ destructive wake is seen clearly today,
The eruption that obliterated had also paved a way.
May 18, 2022
May 18, 2022 at 11:31 AM UTC
He carves words he has spoken
Of promises unbroken
whispering into the dark
Chiselling delicately into her bones
With tobacco juice to bring out the tones
Quietly engraving symbols and psalms
Living for the night
Working through to the light
Communing only through dreams
In daylight she's secure
Inside a white Alder tree
Protected and respected
Her spirit flies free
Jul 16, 2019
Jul 16, 2019 at 3:36 PM UTC
The water had fallen. And then it rose. And finally, it was green again.
And it was as I descended into the river bed,
through the streams and bramble,
beneath the lush green canopy,
that my peace came back.
It was wild and alive.
And it would fill my soul to be there.
The rich smell of the soil, like something primordial and sweet,
set my memories into motion.
With each step I followed my history backwards,
eager for the lessons that the rain and wind would bring.
And I thought about what was and what is now.
And I recalled so many who had once wandered these wild ways with me before.
Those that have begun to tend their own gradens.
Rows of flowers, orchards, roses, and ivy (trained to grow along ivory latice, like castle walls).
Each thing in its place.
Watered. Nurtured.
Painstakingly cared for and thriving.
But not you.
You are still the winding creek, filled with life and lined with secrets. Ready to rush with fury and beauty at a moments notice.
You are the tall cane and alder making a canopy thick enough to halt the light.
You are the seep willow and the cottonwoods drinking the river bottom directly in to your soul.
You are the raven caw. The calling falcon. The cooing dove. The scream of the hawk. The sound of the sky in every brush stroke note of your voice.
You are the thick brush that touches each bank, powerful and unruly, like bookends to sacred wisdom.
You are the mighty things. The ring of mountians encapsulating the horizon. The clouds that lay with silent fury. The crashing lighting and the echoing thunder. The deep and silent woods.
You are not the garden.
And I prefer you wild.
Jan 21, 2017
Jan 21, 2017 at 12:37 PM UTC
Blue haze is in the air at dusk
Wet dew descends on grass,
Sunset’s red striations touch
Horizon’s clouds of glass
A heavy silence permeates
With the settling of the day,
And clouds of starlings flock to roost
With nightfall underway.
The homestead paddock’s horses
All graze quietly in the gloom
As evening light turns purple red
To a distant blackbird’s tune.
A golden leafage carpetry
Is spread across the road
And the farmer trudges through it
homeward bound, beneath his load.
The cottage lights are glowing gold
As daylight dwindles now.
The softly spiraled chimney smoke,
The lowing of the cow,
The leafless alder branches
Stretching to a sky of stars
As the chill of late Autumnal
Celebrates the birth of Mars.
Marshalg
In the Autumn leaves
Victoria Park Tunnel
24 April 2010
Apr 23, 2010
Apr 23, 2010 at 5:04 PM UTC
Reticent, morning hides
behind boles of alder, the air
escaping his lungs
Calcifies in my chest.
A caustic mist mists
Over the rivers pane. Thick
White trails into fine liquid
Black, interring the
slight, torn body. Orange sky-swell
Washes incandescent green:
Dark sienna burns
A path to the waters scorched
White stone. The wood
Holds no sympathy: alacritous
calls knife the sorrowful heart.
Mar 9, 2012
Mar 9, 2012 at 9:24 PM UTC
Is it just me
Or is it just four bottles of beer
Or is it just the picky, pock, patchy
Thawed and re-frozen
Left-over snow
Or the starry sky
A hint of Northern Lights
With the beautiful s-bend of the river
Willow and alder as skeletons
Scribbled against the winter meadow
With river-washed flotsam
Caught along the fence-line
The big trout in midstream under the bridge
In daylight behind her rock
And why not still so now?
Or is it just peculiar -
That while to every horizon the stars fall to Earth
As secrets on countless tongues -
That the word on my lips
Is your name
Mar 4, 2011
Mar 4, 2011 at 10:39 AM UTC
With the sun at it's peak, the dew from the morning's
fog began to trickle off the leaves, soaking into
the ornamental indigo bulbs, decorating
the shrubs with an inedible elegance.
Standing tall and gently swaying, a near by
alder tries to hug a lamp pole or help
it stand, with the ferns sturdy,
reaching at it's feet.
Branches stretch themselves out as if to say, "Good Afternoon"
to the squirrels and humming blue jays making their way
back home, bringing donations found under-
neath the soil that breathes life to all.
Feb 18, 2018
Feb 18, 2018 at 10:56 PM UTC
Don't be scared, little thought!
I saw you, keeking out from behind some triviality
Reluctant to disturb me
(you could see I was tired), but please,
don't go, don't go!
I think we've met before? Some years ago
When I was less careless with my time
And slower to retreat along well trodden paths.
I'm afraid I'm not the host I was,
but wait - at least remind me of your name?
Are you a vanished love,
Neither finished nor fulfilled?
Are you the speechless schoolboy view
From the summit of Ben Alder, won
By twenty miles of peat bog and scree?
(No wonder you feel a stranger here
In front of my T.V!)
Are you a question to which comfort was not the answer?
Oh please wait, I nearly have it!
You're a song, begun but forgotten?
You're something I meant to say to someone, once
You're a friend, a parent - a reason
For loving this great wide world
Don't go - don't leave me here
with Simon Cowell, cheap wine
And no momentum!
Nov 24, 2010
Nov 24, 2010 at 1:48 AM UTC
I am my father
Not metaphorically though
I carved myself from a block of Alder
I am my own Gepetto
I am the prince of my kingdom
This entire homeland of the unsteady
Where I can be proud I am from
Set to inherit all that I have already
This hurts me more than it does you.
Damn my faults, I run into the forgiving arms
of the long-lost ego, the prodigal id
So, you can spare me your false alarms
I’ve known nothing else since I was a kid
I’ll put myself in a home when I reach old age
I hope to relive my youth through my own life
I don’t want to see me make the same mistakes I made
I’m sharpening a knife with a knife
I have handed down to myself all I have learned
I’ve worked for all my respect I’ve earned
This hurts me more than it does you.
The hardest ways, are the ways I’ve learned
I played with fire and I got burned
This hurts me more than it does you.
I’ve seen your world and I know it turned
I have the things you should have yearned
This hurts me more than it does you.
I am an amazing thing that you just spurned
I waited and waited and you never returned
This hurts me more than it does you.
I am aware of things you never discerned
Tell me why you aren’t concerned
This hurts me more than it does you.
…And that’s what makes me better than you.
Jan 2, 2013
Jan 2, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
Whispers of clouds brought to life
From a child's observant hand,
Tied firmly with twine
To mine
Are puddles now,
Unfathomably deep and yet
Impenetrable,
As a windowpane in a lamplit room facing the glossy
Liquid tar of the night,
And sometimes I see the sky
And sometimes I believe I can see the bottom
And sometimes I see my own face staring back up at me,
Tinted grey,
Wrinkled by age or the tiny footsteps of waterbugs
That have found solace in the stagnant water,
And my eyes are glassy and unfocused
And my nose is crooked,
And I am tempted to take a tiny cup
And drink from that tepid pool
Dip by dip
Until the water has drained
And the bottom is no longer an elusive phantom
Masked by a pallid imitation
Of the life that breathes before it,
And the waterbugs and their skittering legs
Are all inside me
Where they bounce around in my warm skin
So I,
Too,
May remember how it feels to be alive,
But the dirt under my fingernails
And the husks peeling from my shoulders
And the tendril roots anchoring downward from my toes
Craft,
In their chthonic shelter -
A suffocating darkness of soil
That strips the eyes and lungs of their familiar needs -
Some lyric
That sings of a new desire
And an emanating warmth that reprimands my very body
For being so naïve,
To think that it
May whither away
Should the sun set on one Summer day's
Dusky glow
(So reminiscent of the afternoons
Where you would grip my fingers and guide me through
The ins and outs
Of ravenous caterpillar holes
Bitten into the leaves
Of the alder trees,
Never allowing me to forget
How you despised their aberrant bodies,
"Freaks of the natural world,"
And I would tell
To closed-off ears
Stories of transformation
And the butterfly that fed
On the ugliness of a fat insect
And turned it into romance)
So I abstain
From my brackish libation
And sit back,
With my dusty hand,
Burnt from the grip of the string,
Pressed to my parched throat,
My stale reflection retreating over the edge
Of the pond,
And,
From my new perch,
See,
The sliver of the Moon,
In her own reflection,
A promise,
Of the Sun that approaches on his handsome chariot,
And wait,
For the return of day
And,
A new face
To wash
Ashore in the tide.
Mar 4, 2011
Mar 4, 2011 at 3:51 PM UTC
Getting older is not an illusion nor is it a common fact. Adulthood doesn't come with a specific age, and childhood doesn't either.
I feel old.
I'm not.
But I feel like the blood in my veins have run for decades - and my skin have protected my flesh for about a lifetime.
My eyes have seen what there is to see, and my mouth tasted what there is to taste.
My veins have carried my blood whit everything possible
alderdom er ikke en alder
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 5:21 PM UTC
Song and Dance
Hot hot hot
Watch out
****
Oh yea
Dark Star!!!
Your Love
Like a Sax
Wooing
Ripe Lips
****
You're my
Hot Devil
...--
Jul 5, 2016
Jul 5, 2016 at 11:21 PM UTC
In a wood thick with wild flowers and fern
I first saw you
Hidden inside a caterpillar skin
wriggling to get out
I watched as you twisted free
from your pupa
unfolding your wonderfully coloured cape
as the wind picked you up
and carries you
from flower to flower
nectar still dripping from you tongue
The wind rose again
as you perched on the branch
of an Alder tree
I watched as you slipped out of your cape
slid down the trunk to dance
on a fairy ring
I’m sure you smiled
at me
as you ran home down your fairy path
I've been back many times
I do believe in fairies
Aug 1, 2015
Aug 1, 2015 at 8:05 AM UTC
Bubbles of talk and understanding laughter rise and fall -
A warmth of people in the orange light.
Some places lend themselves to parables,
As here - in Severn-circled Shrewsbury by night.
Present friends make links to older times;
The words that are your living to make live
Trace the sinews of their journeys to a
Younger name of where we live and love -
An Alder Hill- Place of meeting and of meaning
Under sheltering green where words and lives
Were shared. We inherit now in human glow
Of present conversation, a river's-depth of memories flowing here.
The Alder trees live on. Their ghostly roots
And branches now the passages and shuts
That tell the light-dark-light of life,
With newer voices echoing their questions, truths and fears.
And some to find a way together, whatever
Distances prevail, to meet upon a day – your day.
While still the opal swans glide silent, knowing,
On the night time shadows of the Severn.
Seeing, saying all, if only we could hear.
Oct 27, 2013
Oct 27, 2013 at 5:31 PM UTC