"coppice" poems
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
2.9k
When smoke stood up from Ludlow,
And mist blew off from Teme,
And blithe afield to ploughing
Against the morning beam
I strode beside my team,
The blackbird in the coppice
Looked out to see me stride,
And hearkened as I whistled
The trampling team beside,
And fluted and replied:
"Lie down, lie down, young yeoman;
What use to rise and rise?
Rise man a thousand mornings
Yet down at last he lies,
And then the man is wise."
I heard the tune he sang me,
And spied his yellow bill;
I picked a stone and aimed it
And threw it with a will:
Then the bird was still.
Then my soul within me
Took up the blackbird's strain,
And still beside the horses
Along the dewy lane
It sang the song again:
"Lie down, lie down, young yeoman;
The sun moves always west;
The road one treads to labour
Will lead one home to rest,
And that will be the best."
2.5k
Amber sun gently kisses moss
as light smiles upon morning frost
and like a worm, the dark crawls away
while birds sing of the coming day
another page, in the story of life
but this moment, a sight of paradise
Damp soil, welcomes each step I take
through meadows nourished by Coniston lake
and fragrance of berry and coppice trees
cling to the dance of the cooling breeze
another page, in the story of life
but this moment, a scent of paradise
Dappled sunshine, tangled in leaves
warm to the skin as I feel it breathe
and branches greet in a muted silence
but speak their joy through rustling violent
another page, in the story of life
but this moment, a sound of paradise
Sharing time, in company of friends
celebrating the day as day time ends
and mead is drunk until bashful after
with hearty food, and hearty laughter
another page, in the story of life
but this moment, a savor of paradise
Cosmic night, punctured by stars
As I cease to slumber and drift afar
and silence haunts the building halls
as Coniston mountain guards my corpse
another page, in the story of life
but this day, a day in paradise
Mar 2, 2019
Mar 2, 2019 at 12:05 PM UTC
Tall they stand, browned by sun and wind
Heads held proudly high as they get the harvest in
Yes these are men of the Sussex Weald who proudly work the land
These are the men who plant and gather the food that feeds the land
For generations handed down the long held Wealden crafts
They still know how to coppice the hazel oak and ash
They can still use the tools their grandfather used those many years ago
The billhook and the scythe, the hand axe and the ***
Now modern machines do the work but the old crafts will never die
Men of the Weald are a proud race until the day they die
Yes I'm a man of the Sussex Weald and know how to wield the axe
I know how to work the land but my pay wont make me fat
May 9, 2014
May 9, 2014 at 6:19 AM UTC
Frost rests upon the sills
with fire lit skies providing visible noise.
Floorboard streets creak
with the heaped lost handles
of the midnight cement men.
Only silent moral support carries
the burden of their 10 ‘til 10.
Doorway arch and the ice that hangs loose,
marry each other in
a ceremony of contrast,
forced together like noose
and a neck.
Noose and neck break
bonds of trust, and out
of the fractures that appear,
make coppice bone branches
of words: the all clear, the end
the funeral march pier.
Dec 17, 2012
Dec 17, 2012 at 11:28 AM UTC
At a distance, the bland earth is a photo tinged of emerald green
Selfsame cars blow through. Playing in the margins
Forfeits judgment and your peace to the 10,000 shades of envy.
The usual story is re-penned like some perverse guarantee
We’ll all be disappointed some day, and everyone is at large
From a distance, those scowling portraits done with shades of emerald green
Something we’ve come to need and come to hate, against what men levy
Me and what they weigh the lithe little ghost of the human heart in
It seems strange outside light of rippling 10,000 shades of envy.
But where it is heard the gentle thrush say, “bereave, bereave, bereave,”
I’ll be a small voice in the coppice, singing, “breathe, breathe, still breathing”
At length, some small corners of the bland earth take on that emerald green
Thorns may drain burgundy from your hands, to leave your skin sticky sweet
Impressed in those ugly scabs like how you love yourself like sin,
The thorns just fall off like clothing in 10,000 shades of envy,
We lift pain away then, the happiness of the finally free
Hands lifted away from prayer can worship the single day in
And closely hold earth’s photo tinged of emerald green, then there’s no need
For forfeiture, I’ve my 10,000 shades of a different envy.
Mar 28, 2015
Mar 28, 2015 at 8:41 PM UTC
Ring-doves with stoles
as black as ice,
constrained by priestly cloth,
flew oblivious to our delights,
blotting the evening sun.
As rooks adorned
The Gallows frame,
with limbs demure and frail,
bleak spectres stalked the shadows
nigh, their faces gaunt and pale.
You sought a comfort
truly base,
on rocks far to the west,
thatched dwellings stirring distantly,
the town it would not rest.
For fear of the malicious one
that steals both young and aged:
The Gallows wait,
their slender necks,
like brittle coppice gates.
Feb 15, 2012
Feb 15, 2012 at 2:05 PM UTC
The forest is alive with Woods and timbers of Oak. Wild thickets and sheltered homes. Ivy growth's rise over coppice. Clumps of flowers and Clover bloom where light penetrates. The weald is our home.
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 3:51 PM UTC
Gallantry badge stitched to rotting cloth
as the skin sinks and the bones fade
and the love made is left to reek the bed
where sexless wife and lonely daughter
Lay their head's arrest.
In due time they both tan, sag and crackle
Under weight of the sun.
That dizzy cyclops that roped forth
homecoming boats and ships stands
five years from being defunct; rusted
to the hue of a coppice
and hardly the attraction it once was
But oh well— sighs the sailor, too old and bankrupt to care
for approaching poverty— the money has been made and my life spent
For others (his Sister, his Niece, his Brother)
They lack the ability to sigh;
the closest they get is the occasional stormy wind
that cracks the surface, blows through their teeth
resembling a crooked lullaby,
Revolves the bullet lodged in their skull;
O occasional stormy rain that beshrews the water
clogging their lungs and, in due time, The leaking muck
that’ll pluck and sharply snap inward the casketwood--
directly against the bullet gathhering mold in their heart--
Their souls have been spent.
One less soldier wouldn't have changed a thing
(The result was a certainty propagated
as a contingency)
And if G-d bare'd witness his eyes no longer sting,
His grievances had and his puppets dead
Following a suffering in his name.
If Thy Kingdom holds true
They bare witness now to the lighthouse
In it's chipping hue, it's trivial dock and visitor
Silhouettes—
All held in place and burning; They disfigure
Under weight of the sun.
Aug 12, 2019
Aug 12, 2019 at 2:58 PM UTC
Close your eyes and count to ten,
Why do you pout, you need zen.
Society makes you count your lads?
Lets clad in white and shout at them *****
You want to hide in mesh?
No, I say you stand up and salute the coppice underneath your flesh.
Jan 11, 2016
Jan 11, 2016 at 7:33 PM UTC
11/15/2015
it has been a while since
i've been to the wetland coppice
teetering close to the neck of
a somerset sourland hummock
soft rushes and pickerel ****
wild lavender and marsh elder
a Canadian goose choking on a
birch branch
it died.
it has been a time since I've been there
timber rattler and weasel
playing in the grounsel
September,
like Wallace Stevens: lonely in
Jersey city.
November dead
cold bright annihilating days
i sometimes walk a mile
cutting across dead garden snakes
they sit in the living room, playing
the Nile is full of waste and bile
i wait alone by this little grove,
hoping that my fickleness of
Conversation topics
can help me now
but my mind, it raced
like a dead horse at a betting show
Sunday morning,
Saturday night really
I read Wallace Stevens in the field
And dream about jersey city
Nov 15, 2015
Nov 15, 2015 at 1:32 AM UTC
“The night is raven as you peer that analytical stare,
It is in this way you are blinded by your own eyes,
Sanguine of the gods that exist for all their acumen,
As that of an labyrinth mechanism turning day to night,
Beside the bonfire I think of all that I have descried,
Now no usual noises only the unusual or unexpected,
In autumns that we were with morn dew and argent sun,
That is now left of yellow not gold burnt fibrous leaves,
Of how the world will be for still there are so many things,
That I have never seen in all the forests in every season,
If I should live in a coppice and sleep underneath a sapling,
By a bonfire in different lands thoughts of my incongruous life,
No coppice of saplings that I could not make a glorious home,
I go where the old odeon gather decorous worthy and robust,
The world’s society has long foundered people throughout time,
And they would not sigh and tremble and vex me with a song,
Struggle is harsh and I come back with eyes fatigued,
Gusts upon my hair as I sit beside a crackling fire,
The times from having seen the unchanging earth afore,
So you may take of that elegant rose leave me with a thistle,
For they know not life without the dendrite to wither”
By Andrew Guzaldo 01/05/2019 ©
Feb 5, 2019
Feb 5, 2019 at 10:06 PM UTC
The land was veiled
and silence exultant -
p e r m e a t e d only by
sporadic
bird
calls
resonating from deep within the frozen forest
where life had retreated,
aghast by the glacial wind.
Cowering together,
dwellings shivered
ephemeral oak structures
bowed beneath
the freshly shorn lamb’s wool that enveloped all,
hastening,
the shearer continued.
You left this night,
without a whisper
of regret
across the interminable,
n u a i g furrows
u d l t n
that ridicule your lifeless,
even features - pitiless,
your sodden soles penetrated the ****** snow.
Impervious to such inclemency
I traipse deep into the thicket,
reminded of how earlier
I collected from this q u i v e r i n g coppice,
no more, no less
than my meagre allowance dictates.
Your stride is familiar,
for it was once mine
with metronomic ease I trace you,
further
further
further
traversing a promontory, I see you,
stood on a limestone plinth
overlooking
shimmering pasture below.
You turn; we face,
unwavering symmetry|
as stained crystals fall red with affliction
caressing the firmament I lace your name with my finger
indomitable,
no more.
©Thomas Gabriel
Dec 8, 2011
Dec 8, 2011 at 10:54 PM UTC
Now I was young and easy. Led
entranced under plum tree blossoms
drifting along the sloping drive
to white-washed walled Stud Farm.
This ecstasy of being cool pig-pink
sunk happy in a mud brown wallow.
Then I was bold and carefree,
working among the barns
busy about the happy yard
on the farm that was home.
Young once only, in my kingdom
as Time let me live my dreams.
It carried me over and over again
in daytime walking or running,
it was lovely, the sweet scents:
fragrant hay field’s cut grass
and herbage fully sun dried.
Or, I pedalled in evenings
led by bicycle-dynamo-beamed
light under the stars to sleep.
Above me the barn owls were
claiming skies of swallows clear.
Coppice hooting in preludes,
there bats about soon flitted
where tiny glow worms flickered.
Then to dawn awake: the farm,
mist-shrouded as a roamer white
dew cloaked, returning to hear
***** crowing from hen coops
black cawing crows in the trees.
Glimpsing the same clear sky
changed from yesterday
into today’s white and blue.
The same sun but born again.
The distant church bells ringing.
Nothing I cared for more
than pink piglets new born,
just meadow-birthed lambs
and black and white calves
that would take up my time:
to hold me to the farm forever
released from orphanage hold.
Oh! I was so young and easy.
In the mercy of its means,
Time held me as I was flying
while I threw off captive
chains - at last unshackled - free.
Tobias
Mar 2, 2019
Mar 2, 2019 at 10:10 AM UTC
today that pull toward sleep but not-sleep—
rest
the coppice crowns a slide of green
—so very English,
as the seven-four-seven strikes a stave against the blue vault;
a tabula rasa for a new century’s march,
but the sky remains silent to all that effort
to get from one horizon to the next,
the day comes round soon enough anyhow
—so very now
the jet plane’s pendulum of time-equals-money
centres me and any thoughts I had of making
that walk back to Warwickshire and adolescence
vanish to be replaced by equations
of distance over time,
the number of seats for the lucky few,
the price we have to pay
to escape ourselves…
Jun 7, 2015
Jun 7, 2015 at 4:47 PM UTC
*Fecund , Sun drenched coppice , Marsh Hawk pursuing eyes , mid-afternoon iridescent Dragonflies , half turn of the ever evolving earthly -panel , a fragile , cobalt soap bubble teetering from parasitic occupation
Felled timberland bridges , Warbler performers , days of pungent Pine -and Water Oak umbrellas
Persuasive vapors commanding the senses from every direction , spun in -the pastureland , seeking the fall of the stratospheric canopy , poetic tales -of the inverted world*
May 13, 2016
May 13, 2016 at 3:54 PM UTC
The Darkling Thrush.
I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to me The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy, *
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew, And I was unaware.
31 December 1900
By Thomas Hardy
Dec 21, 2018
Dec 21, 2018 at 11:47 AM UTC
‘The time’s become fleeting and flying,
And rushing me off to the grave,’
Or so would say Roderick Styling,
‘It’s sweeping me on like a wave.’
I found his remarks so depressing
I’d walk on the side of the street
Where I knew he wouldn’t be walking,
On hearing the sound of his feet.
He’d corner me back in the office,
Unburden his pure misery,
Or catch me in field or in coppice,
To tell me his bleak history.
For often I’d find he was waiting
Wherever he shouldn’t have been,
I found that I couldn’t avoid him,
His whispers and chatter obscene.
‘We’ve only one life, so enjoy it,’
I’d counter, when he would begin,
But then he would start to destroy it,
By saying that life became grim.
‘The older you get, so the faster,
It races along like a train,
Is headed for certain disaster,
The end of the journey is pain.’
Then he seemed to age by the minute,
His skin became wrinkled and worn,
Despair, he would seem to dive in it,
And had since the day he was born.
‘You’ll not do yourself any favours,’
I’d say, ‘when it hangs on each breath,
For life will not gift what it savours,
If you’re so determined on death.’
But one day I looked in the mirror,
And saw what I never had seen,
The markings of age, like a river,
Were flowing, where once youth had been.
I tried to ignore it by sighing
That ageing was lending me grace,
But I could see Roderick Styling
Was staring right back in my face.
And that’s when I knew life was fleeting
I had to seize what there was left,
I sent him a note for a meeting
While I was still feeling bereft.
He lies in a grave in a coppice
A jagged hole under his jaw,
While I work alone, in the office,
He’d got what he’d been looking for.
David Lewis Paget
Sep 16, 2017
Sep 16, 2017 at 6:33 AM UTC
Still loose, my mind drifts
over coppice, brook,
past fields left fallow
to heal
ragged with sedge, ragwort,
while crickets twitch defiance
Here is where I send myself
as the keyboard walls clatter in
and time returns to rigid
and gravity remembers to hold
Aug 27, 2021
Aug 27, 2021 at 5:11 AM UTC
"I am now bedeviled by her conjure of obscurity intensity,
Could this be hers it must for I know nothing of such alchemy,
Enmeshed now is my fate with this seemingly obscurity afore,
Is she the curer or the harm that meanders amidst daily logic?
Who may save me from torrid anguish beguiling my heart?
I know not what may have been cast upon my simple soul,
In my prior enraptured by you I am now left disparaged,
Delusional I now bare reecho sounds of vibrancy of rivers,
Sources of solidity have evoked water like fateful bouts,
As then my tears and gains across the sandy rivers edge,
Expounded breaking down on the way all earthly lakes,
Coppice compact walls disengages the planetary quartz,
Nostalgic planetary feelings as droplets of rain fall upon me,
As they soothe my heart and cleanse my bedeviled soul,
By Andrew Guzaldo 11/05/2018 ©
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 6:40 PM UTC
“Perception lost in this coppice of desolation,
That has been enthralled into my soul,
I no longer know where to find her,
I harken her voice in the gusty gale,
In my hours of sleep I feel her under my skin,
Now months seem as years ephemeral,
As time passes its cataclysm is episodic to you,
As I sit here in a trapped incubus of remorse,
I no longer hunger for that daily bread of entity,
My starvation is deeper and more adherent,
Feeding on the memory of her and love once was,
Meander fragrance of her ascends through psyche,
Captive in this refuge of love once past me by,
Dream journeys lead me to the islet where we met,
That day I remember her smiling beautiful face,
Seems if it were miles and miles away yet so near,
As she moves on in her life may she be strong,
May her prowess be all that it can be afore?
May I take the pain of a broken heart instead of thee?
Initiating in the new dawn my desolation shall begin,
To once again start bleakness in sunrise refuge”
By A. Guzaldo 06/27/2018 ©
Jun 27, 2018
Jun 27, 2018 at 7:16 PM UTC
“If there is one thing that I can tell you,
Let it be you are at your home on this islet,,
Your body is your only house your temple
Your dreams sit along the shoreline waiting,
There’s no pleasure in the impassable coppice,
There is elation on the lonely shore afore thee,
There lays a civilization where no one intrudes,
By the briny ocean and its symphony as it roars,
One must never love a human any less,
But nature is to be cherished even further,
Where the love all blooms day and night,
Be not afraid of the cacophony on the island,
Sounds and sweet air that will not hurt you,
At times sounds of a harmony of instruments,
It will allay your mind into the calm of the night,
And awake to morning an exhilarating new sunup,
Sweet spring flower and the sea that surrounds us,
At Symphony Island”
By Andrew Guzaldo 10/23/2018 ©
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 8:30 PM UTC
Where have I come from?
Where am I headed?
What am I doing here?
Does it feed my soul’s desire?
Who am I?
Am I who I want to be?
Am I who I’m destined to be?
Into the woods
Seeking solace and R&R,
Away from civilisation,
And the dreaded mobile phone.
Off grid, switched off and outnumbered by trees,
Explore who I am, what I’m doing, where I’m heading.
At 50
Time to take stock,
Reappraise and reapply,
And fulfil my soul’s path.
How do you do that?
When you don’t know what it is
When you don’t know who you are
When you’ve never truly been you.
Always wanting desperately to fit in,
but never seeming able.
Afraid of being judged,
yet judging too.
Never taking action
for consequential fear.
Drifting through life,
Disassociated,
Disconnected,
Discombobulated,
No surprise.
Disengaged,
Discontented,
Disenchanted.
5 nights in the woods
Just me and my tent.
Walking all day,
Staring in the fire all night.
Sitting in peace and quiet amongst coppice, hornbeam and oak
Seeking answers
With none forthcoming.
Other than taking time out.
And dreaming of
Living the #vanlife
Going where the mood takes me.
No rush, no worries, no cares,
Just me and my camper van
Freedom and
Flexibility.
Travelling on the road,
Meeting kindness of strangers,
Comfy dress down
No airs and graces,
Deep conversations,
Connection,
Move on.
Being the nomadic free spirit,
that’s me.
But is it an escape?
A way to stay disconnected?
A way to not face up to feelings
Of anger and shame?
Or will it be the making of me?
The discovery of me?
The adventurer in me?
Aug 12, 2020
Aug 12, 2020 at 2:54 PM UTC
When younger tongues
were free of froth
when softened air propelled
the word in hungered myths
of coppice smoke,
that somehow spoke of home...
Alone
but never lonely
in the healing of a wood
befriended
green redeemer stood
a deep fermented sense
of something constant..
Aug 25, 2024
Aug 25, 2024 at 1:02 AM UTC
The coppice was full of bird songs
And daffodils so fair
But I can no longer see them
For my eyes are dim with dispair.
Could not reach the truth
It was taken without heart
Lies broken somewhere
Stuck in a conjuror’s throat.
Mary ***
Feb 5, 2019
Feb 5, 2019 at 7:17 AM UTC