"bracken" poems
dust cloud heavy
in an apricot sky
cottonwood mucker
under ambrose pale
whippet and shepherd
mill at the earth patch
yellow birch hangs
over red bench park
combine shavings
in crack rust brown
scissors chips fall
at the back stop
whiskey jack looters
sing patented chords
siblings (and 2 wheel enthusiasts!)
give thanks
joyous retrievers
master the criss cross
bare maples stand
at settlers way
barred owl and blue jay
whistle in the fore-wind
ghosts
and goblins
pull on the seeds
wind gusts belt
over the west gulch
a blood rush churns
in the chilling fall morn
hallowed grounds still
at the midday
quiet reflections
of the afghan
and hound
jumpers unite
at the oxbow
route runners bend
(on a sultry foray!)
meadows exposed
in the framework
ball parks empty
with pennants past
barrel dirt favors
the brew house
crimson and copper
find bracken ridge gate
harvest hands savor
the honey and hops
blankets of color
for a winter's hatch
brush fire kept
under steady peruse
bark bites fly
and embers glow
pine cones drop
from the timber tops
3 wick candles
grace the dinner place
shiver and ******
at the piper's call
cob web dew
on the shadowy gates
a chilled mist mellows
the season's return ~
poets and artists
and dreamers awake
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 11:55 PM UTC
Simula ng makilala ka,
Buhay ko'y sumisigla,
Lagi akong masaya,
Nalaman ko ang tunay na kahulugan ng tuwa at ligaya,
Aking pagsinta,
Bakit nga ba?
Naranasan ko ang mga pambihirang bagay,
Ang mundo ko'y naging makulay,
Binuhay mo ang diwa kong matamlay,
Ikaw ang aking lakas,
Pinakita mo ang aking magandang bukas,
Mula sa simula, gitna, dulo at wakas,
Ang isip at puso ko'y iyong pinatalas,
Madapa man ako'y iyong hinawakan,
Binangon mo ako mula sa lupang aking kinasasadlakan,
Napuntahan ko ang dulo ng kalawakan,
Ang mga puno't halaman,
Ang berdeng kagubatan,
Ang ganda ng kabundukan,
Lahat ng ito'y aking nasisilayan,
Daan ka nga ng pakikipag-ugnayan,
Ika'y gamit sa pakikipagtalastasan,
Daan tungo sa kaunlaran,
Ngunit ako'y nanghihinayang,
Dahil ika'y di kilala ng maraming kabataan,
Sabi nga nila hindi ka magandang pagmasdan,
Di nila namamalayan,
Ika'y maaari nilang maging kaibigan,
Taglay mo ang naiibang kapangyarihan,
Ika'y iniregalo ni Rizal sa kanyang buthing may bahay,
Kay Josephine Bracken ika'y ibinigay,
"Kempis "ka kung tawagin,
Ika'y,"Tagalog Christ" naman para kay Ferdinand Blumentritt.
Alam kung di matatawaran,
Ang iyong kasiyahan,
Kapag ang mga pahina mo'y binubuksan,
Mabuti kang sandigan!
Sayo nagmumula ang di matatawarang panindigan,
at di-natitinag na katwiran,
Mabuti kang larawan,
Nagsisilbing huwaran,
Magpakailanman!
Maipagmamalaki kahit saan,
Pangako ko ika'y aking dadalhin,
Pupurihin, I-ingatan at papahalagahan,
Hanggang sa aking huling hantungan,
Sayo lamang...... Minamahal kong----aklat!
Aug 16, 2017
Aug 16, 2017 at 12:10 AM UTC
Robert Frost once talked of taking the ‘road less travelled’.
Well, I didn’t.
When the time came, I blindly went and took the safest road.
A very long path where the pitfalls were plenty.
I stumbled in the bracken. Stymied by the darkness that fell quickly as I ambled along.
The soul bruised, battered and exhausted at every infrequent stop.
It was not apparent then that in this venture there was a bleak dead end ahead.
I plowed on even though something inside was telling me again and again to turn back.
But, slowly, a gleaming light of hope crossed my vista beckoning me home.
I crawled. My strength regained as the light intensified.
Then the end was in sight - the portal was within grasp.
And so, yes, I now take that road less travelled.
Standing tall and proud as I gleefully stride down its glowing thoroughfare.
Smiling at the diverse and playful changes that cross my pathway.
All told, it’s never too late to trust your instincts and make a difference.
Just ask me.
And Robert Frost.
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 5:41 PM UTC
I do not ask for youth, nor for delay
in the rising of time's irreversible river
that takes the jewelled arc of the waterfall
in which I glimpse, minute by glinting minute,
all that I have and all I am always losing
as sunlight lights each drop fast, fast falling.
I do not dream that you, young again,
might come to me darkly in love's green darkness
where the dust of the bracken spices the air
moss, crushed, gives out an astringent sweetness
and water holds our reflections
motionless, as if for ever.
It is enough now to come into a room
and find the kindness we have for each other
— calling it love — in eyes that are shrewd
but trustful still, face chastened by years
of careful judgement; to sit in the afternoons
in mild conversation, without nostalgia.
But when you leave me, with your jauntiness
sinewed by resolution more than strength
— suddenly then I love you with a quick
intensity, remembering that water,
however luminous and grand, falls fast
and only once to the dark pool below.
9.6k
Saturday
Sounds like the pattering
Of bare feet
On a dusty concrete yard,
Smells of chimney smoke
And jagged coal heath,
Sheep-scent and
Wiry wool on a barbed fence,
Saturday
Is a jangly guitar
In a rickety truck
On a gravel road,
With a gravel voice
Rough as grit,
Deep as the caverns
Between the peaks,
Saturday
Is sunlight on an enamel ***
A tin kettle
And its blood metal tea,
It is blackberry-bitten legs
and iodine streams,
A canopy of heady bracken
Below penny-marked trees,
Then Sunday,
Slantwise
Against the setting sun
Away again.
Jan 12, 2018
Jan 12, 2018 at 6:09 PM UTC
Through frost-thick weather
This witch sidles, fingers crooked, as if
Caught in a hazardous medium that might
Merely by its continuing
Attach her to heaven.
At eye's envious corner
Crow's-feet copy veining on a stained leaf;
Cold squint steals sky's color; while bruit
Of bells calls holy ones, her tongue
Backtalks at the raven
Claeving furred air
Over her skull's midden; no knife
Rivals her whetted look, divining what conceit
Waylays simple girls, church-going,
And what heart's oven
Craves most to cook batter
Rich in strayings with every amorous oaf,
Ready, for a trinket,
To squander owl-hours on bracken bedding,
Flesh unshriven.
Against ****** prayer
This sorceress sets mirrors enough
To distract beauty's thought;
Lovesick at first fond song,
Each vain girl's driven
To believe beyond heart's flare
No fire is, nor in any book proof
Sun hoists soul up after lids fall shut;
So she wills all to the black king.
The worst sloven
Vies with best queen over
Right to blaze as satan's wife;
Housed in earth, those million brides shriek out.
Some burn short, some long,
Staked in pride's coven.
4.2k
Betwixt the shrub and hubabubb
'neath bracken's shadowed scowl
came a Wren pop-hopping when
arrested by a yowl
He spied another grovely bird
chattering with the gloom
realising it had been observed
it screeked with spittled spume
*Stay back, stay back
alack, alack
I've nothing left to give
and should you shake the life from me
unhappy you shall live*
Like him the grovely had a one leg
and too the veshy eye
and when he flexed his deeker wings
he knew this bird must die.
The unctuous Wren popped back and forth
as did the groveley bird
and there they stood 'twix shrub and earth
exchanging not a word.
Just this once I'll let you go
announced the cautious Wren
he turned his fractious beak to blow
and was never seen again.
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 11:29 AM UTC
My body was found in an autochthonous cranny stinking of death,
between the hookers legs; burned
with a magnesium flash- of the bulb popping.
It illuminates mere shapes
resembling humans only remotely;
the way a copse of bracken burnt conifers' resemble matchsticks.
Dec 15, 2010
Dec 15, 2010 at 3:13 PM UTC
Put the saddle on the mare,
For the wet winds blow;
There's winter in the air,
And autumn all below.
For the red leaves are flying
And the red bracken dying,
And the red fox lying
Where the oziers grow.
Put the bridle on the mare,
For my blood runs chill;
And my heart, it is there,
On the heather-tufted hill,
With the gray skies o'er us,
And the long-drawn chorus
Of a running pack before us
From the find to the ****
Then lead round the mare,
For it's time that we began,
And away with thought and care,
Save to live and be a man,
While the keen air is blowing,
And the huntsman holloing,
And the black mare going
As the black mare can.
3.3k
Coastline, rocky, rugged, proud,
Crumbling cliffs in ozone shroud,
Sun-kissed drifts of desert sand,
Golden frame of a sea cradled land.
Fishing village, atmospheric hub,
Brass band playing, outside quaint old pub,
Boats, all sizes, rest near harbour wall,
Wading birds sift through tide-filled pool.
Foliage explosion of a Cornish hedge,
Country lanes snake, and young birds fledge,
Ruminants, punctuating, quilted hill,
Buzzards soar and wise hares are still.
Tin mine engine house, towering stack,
Roof caved in, gorse and bracken’s back,
White clay peak, geometrical and sleek,
Earth’s riches gouged, canyon deep.
Moor-land, open, untamed, granite strewn,
Wild ponies dance to a skylark’s tune,
Tor and beacon, barrow and mound,
You’re in God’s own country, when you walk this ground.
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 5:05 AM UTC
Parental affiliations shroud the perimeters of sociological desperation. Like a gorgeous eye which cries in Gaelic rainstorms. Feel the texture of bracken, as she scrapes her tangible beauty against your pale and excited skin. But hold your breath, my ever-connected member of covenantal being. Do not let go of the tantric touch of spatial awareness.
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 3:59 PM UTC
Blackberries, fat with summer rays,
Burst sure and true, like ocean waves
Against my tongue they carry too
The scent, the touch, the taste of you.
Each bramble stripped with greedy hands
Felt no qualm from scarlet brands
Those such marks would wash away but
Stains of you will still remain.
The scratches heal, I’ll brush away
Those nettle prongs that stick and stay
I’ll brush the bracken, soothe the sting
But thoughts of you will always cling.
Those onyx beads, their shiny spheres
Imbued with Sunshine, wet with tears;
The taste is fading from my mouth
Their waves of sweetness drawing out.
Mar 25, 2015
Mar 25, 2015 at 12:44 PM UTC
I sought for my happiness over the world,
Oh, eager and far was my quest;
I sought it on mountain and desert and sea,
I asked it of east and of west.
I sought it in beautiful cities of men,
On shores that were sunny and blue,
And laughter and lyric and pleasure were mine
In palaces wondrous to view;
Oh, the world gave me much to my plea and my prayer
But never I found aught of happiness there!
Then I took my way back to a valley of old
And a little brown house by a rill,
Where the winds piped all day in the sentinel firs
That guarded the crest of the hill;
I went by the path that my childhood had known
Through the bracken and up by the glen,
And I paused at the gate of the garden to drink
The scent of sweet-briar again;
The homelight shone out through the dusk as of yore
And happiness waited for me at the door!
2.7k
You go up the long track
That will take a car, but is best walked
On slow foot, noting the lichen
That writes history on the page
Of the grey rock. Trees are about you
At first, but yield to the green bracken,
The nightjars house: you can hear it spin
On warm evenings; it is still now
In the noonday heat, only the lesser
Voices sound, blue-fly and gnat
And the stream's whisper. As the road climbs,
You will pause for breath and the far sea's
Signal will flash, till you turn again
To the steep track, buttressed with cloud.
And there at the top that old woman,
Born almost a century back
In that stone farm, awaits your coming;
Waits for the news of the lost village
She thinks she knows, a place that exists
In her memory only.
You bring her greeting
And praise for having lasted so long
With time's knife shaving the bone.
Yet no bridge joins her own
World with yours, all you can do
Is lean kindly across the abyss
To hear words that were once wise.
2.7k
This scent of you, it clings to my skin,
it clings like a rash that's boiled over from within.
I scratch at this poison that has marked my flesh,
the scent of you, at your very ****** best.
I throw off the covers and hit the wall with my fist;
should lust be a sin, if lust is like this?
And no matter what with who, how, what or where,
everytime i sleep i can feel your ****** stare.
And the weight of your fingers on the back of my neck
drives me to nightmares, and meaningless ***
Tinged by the moment and forgotten by the hue,
my arms are brusied easily by the scent of you.
I'm running wildly through bracken and fire,
i'm running as a beast would run from apathy and desire.
I, the lone wolf, i'm moonlit, i scratch and i howl,
at the memory of your face, and your sneering sharp scowl.
I, the lone rider, in flight fearless, reckless and abused,
I jump fields, catch branches, torn, bleeding and bruised.
I hide in the woods, and float in the sea
I'm hiding myself from the deepest memory of me.
You're the poision ivy to my deepest forest of bark,
You're the drifting snow to my deepest vision of dark.
This scent of you, it clings to my lips
and i bite my tongue as i stretch my fingertips.
There is no sense in this dirt that flies through my hands
my thoughts are lost as stone is lost in beached sands.
I rip at my skin and i tear at my voice
I made this my dealing, at my beck, at my choice.
I draw upon my body like a breeze skims the ground,
there is no more wanton whimper, than there is my sound.
And at night when the nightmares come and i scream in my sleep,
the scent of you overwhelms my body, and i sow what i reap.
I lightly collect my feelings and throw them in a box,
I wrap in chains and cover it in locks.
I have been fooled, i have been fooled and blinded by you
and this scent lingers, in a memory of a distant bluish hue.
I watch as you walk away, your hips sway, tail high
And i howl and i scream and i sit and i cry.
And whilst i linger alongside this sharp vivid movie scene,
i count my bruises and feel quietly serene.
Jan 27, 2013
Jan 27, 2013 at 5:59 PM UTC
There are crackles and scratches woven here;
bridges and highways where little things run.
Over tangles of brambles and berries
a bud’s coming out; a hand lying open in grass.
There is bracken crisping; brown and dry;
shaded by waxy leaves where water ***** roll.
There are bees in the air, flitting around.
Air which is thick with nectar and pollen.
It’s dense in here; cramped thorns twist,
ears are twitching, claws scratch on bark.
When the light goes away eyes start to shine,
the scurrying gets furious, noises in darkness.
An owl glides down and a mouse hurries up
but quicker than light, he’s swept from the ground.
Spiralling up from his hawthorn nest
He’s stolen away; into the night.
Sparrows whistle, a feather snags on a branch
and the moon bows down to the lilac dawn.
Mar 21, 2012
Mar 21, 2012 at 8:32 PM UTC
Tea stained blotches
Slowly spread across
thick green leaves
as July is pulled into
August. Fat blackberries
Are scattered into hedgerows of
Cow parsley.
Brambles reach out their forked
Fingers and nettles swallow the pathways.
I am looking forward to autumn
When I am no longer in a busy emerald city
But instead in cool quiet
Trudging through golden bracken.
Jul 25, 2022
Jul 25, 2022 at 11:29 AM UTC
What did I Glimpse
In the woods
That day?
Amongst the bracken
And
Bluebells that sway
Something wonderful
Is all
I can say,
Thinking about it,
As I
Pass this way
Feb 23, 2012
Feb 23, 2012 at 11:26 AM UTC
Who's that walking on the moorland?
Who's that moving on the hill?
They are passing 'mid the bracken,
But the shadows grow and blacken
And I cannot see them clearly on the hill.
Who's that calling on the moorland?
Who's that crying on the hill?
Was it bird or was it human,
Was it child, or man, or woman,
Who was calling so sadly on the hill?
Who's that running on the moorland?
Who's that flying on the hill?
He is there -- and there again,
But you cannot see him plain,
For the shadow lies so darkly on the hill.
What's that lying in the heather?
What's that lurking on the hill?
My horse will go no nearer,
And I cannot see it clearer,
But there's something that is lying on the hill.
2.3k
Remnants
of a plastic world
haphazardly dropped
in the duff of pinecones and bracken
litter this redwood path.
Our thoughtless leavings -
shiny mylar strings
and red straws -
must sadden the bluejays
watching from hidden branches.
Oct 24, 2011
Oct 24, 2011 at 10:53 AM UTC
Raindrops,
falling on water
that was still.
Creating sweet unbalance
at one with natures will.
Timeless moment,
wanting nothing from the world.
I listen to its whispers
to see what I might learn.
And the mallard,
his cheeky little eyes
are throwing me a knowing look
as he glides on by.
I watch it now in motion.
I wonder bout his world.
All that he embodies,
with no one to serve.
A sense of truth
a sense freedom,
which seems out of human reach.
I watch the world around me
to seek what it may teach.
There's anger in the bracken
and anger in the grass.
It sweeps down from the valley
and kicks me in the ****
It plays with my emotions,
as sometimes anger can,
and then it asks me questions
about the fruitless quests of men.
It leads me to an ancient ruin
where time has took its toll,
there's anger in the mortor,
and anger in the stone.
It wraps itself around me
with a promise to let go,
if I can live a truer life
if I can learn to grow.
It leaves me with an energy,
yet tired on the sand,
it told me it may still return
for anger is unplanned.
It leaves me with a message,
as only anger can.
Yes anger is an energy,
an energy unplanned.
May 20, 2014
May 20, 2014 at 6:36 AM UTC
Yesterday, all things were dark
Like burning candles in the dusk.
Hibiscus, pear, and witches brew
And dragon's blood caught in the musk
Notions now, seemed **** then
And stealing out into the dark
I dreamt I was the highway man
After my Bess's fickle heart.
The moon above; cycloptic eye
Watched reverently as I crept
Across the mud and bracken path
Where willow trees once stooped and wept.
The musician crickets, with violin legs
Stroked their notes under the sky
And chirping peepers, peeking out
Sang louder in their sweet reply.
A long forgotten hidden grove
That bore the markers of the dead
Was where, for peace, I stopped to roam
Over the grass, to clear my head.
And there- amongst the silent mass,
Who find repose under the land-
I listened to their noiseless words
The silence, which I understand.
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 3:43 PM UTC
These trees are like creatures;
Singing earth held songs of ancient
Untold time
Bracken Moss Fuelled
Stories run down the mossy
Branches and slide into
My humble thoughts
Sitting here amongst such
Quiet shouting knowledge
And I wonder when mere words
Are done with
And the world again speaks
Again with wild language
What these earth bound trees will say of us
To the starred heavens above
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 6:35 PM UTC
Up through the golden bracken
a stem of bright green can be seen
Soon a serenade of trumpets
with bells of blue crashing in-between.
White bells, pink bells
Deep yellow trumpet flowers to top it all
I cannot wait till the spring arrives
and to hear the Cuckoo's call.
So I await with patience
for the Cuckoo and his merry band
for the daffodils and the bluebells
Life could not be more grand.
Feb 6, 2015
Feb 6, 2015 at 1:35 AM UTC