"copse" poems
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.
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God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid
In the same way
He kept the sow--impounded from public stare,
Prize ribbon and pig show.
But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour
Through his lantern-lit
Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door
To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot
For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling
In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,
Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies
Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk
Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must
Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,
Unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat
By a grisly-bristled
Boar, fabulous enough to straddle that sow's heat.
But our farmer whistled,
Then, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape,
And the green-copse-castled
Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,
Slowly, grunt
On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape
A monument
Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want
Made lean Lent
Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,
Proceeded to swill
The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking
continent.
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So much have I forgotten in ten years,
So much in ten brief years! I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice,
And what month brings the shy forget-me-not.
I have forgot the special, startling season
Of the pimento's flowering and fruiting;
What time of year the ground doves brown the fields
And fill the noonday with their curious fluting.
I have forgotten much, but still remember
The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December.
I still recall the honey-fever grass,
But cannot recollect the high days when
We rooted them out of the ping-wing path
To stop the mad bees in the rabbit pen.
I often try to think in what sweet month
The languid painted ladies used to dapple
The yellow by-road mazing from the main,
Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple.
I have forgotten--strange--but quite remember
The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December.
What weeks, what months, what time of the mild year
We cheated school to have our fling at tops?
What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with joy
Feasting upon blackberries in the copse?
Oh some I know! I have embalmed the days,
Even the sacred moments when we played,
All innocent of passion, uncorrupt,
At noon and evening in the flame-heart's shade.
We were so happy, happy, I remember,
Beneath the poinsettia's red in warm December.
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The tractor stands frozen - an agony
To think of. All night
Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale,
A spill of molten ice, smoking snow,
Pours into its steel.
At white heat of numbness it stands
In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness.
It defied flesh and won't start.
Hands are like wounds already
Inside armour gloves, and feet are unbelievable
As if the toe-nails were all just torn off.
I stare at it in hatred. Beyond it
The copse hisses - capitulates miserably
In the fleeing, failing light. Starlings,
A dirtier sleetier snow, blow smokily, unendingly, over
Towards plantations Eastward.
All the time the tractor is sinking
Through the degrees, deepening
Into its hell of ice.
The starting lever
Cracks its action, like a snapping knuckle.
The battery is alive - but like a lamb
Trying to nudge its solid-frozen mother -
While the seat claims my buttock-bones, bites
With the space-cold of earth, which it has joined
In one solid lump.
I squirt commercial sure-fire
Down the black throat - it just coughs.
It ridicules me - a trap of iron stupidity
I've stepped into. I drive the battery
As if I were hammering and hammering
The frozen arrangement to pieces with a hammer
And it jabbers laughing pain-crying mockingly
Into happy life.
And stands
Shuddering itself full of heat, seeming to enlarge slowly
Like a demon demonstrating
A more-than-usually-complete materialization -
Suddenly it jerks from its solidarity
With the concrete, and lurches towards a stanchion
Bursting with superhuman well-being and abandon
Shouting Where Where?
Worse iron is waiting. Power-lift kneels
Levers awake imprisoned deadweight,
Shackle-pins bedded in cast-iron cow-shit.
The blind and vibrating condemned obedience
Of iron to the cruelty of iron,
Wheels screeched out of their night-locks -
Fingers
Among the tormented
Tonnage and burning of iron
Eyes
Weeping in the wind of chloroform
And the tractor, streaming with sweat,
Raging and trembling and rejoicing.
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the green grove a magnet to my eye
on these sun baked plains
I enter the glade to take shade with the cicadas
and vampire mosquitos
then I see it, Eden’s villain, coiled and rattling,
red ready to strike
I raise my staff, I too programmed to survive, do to what millennia
have taught
still we are in this staring standoff—silent save its rattle, deaf
I am to the chorus of insects
neither of us moves for an eternity of seconds, until the snake lunges at my feet
where its fangs find a field mouse, and devour it while I watch, an unwitting witness to expiry other than my own
I leave the copse, whole, content another creature has, for today, taken my place in the bloodletting
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 5:37 PM UTC
Tonight I’ll go into the copse of firs
Where I last saw her, and love blossomed
I remember lust, a face plastered on hers
And the love that was then awesome.
But those woods are black and empty
So barren now and without life.
Rocks cut my shoes, once just lumpy.
There’s not a bird that chirps a fife.
The sun sets and frost nips my nose
I still remember the vibrant red rose.
The ice beneath, it chills my toes.
And the little brook, it’s now froze.
Without you, I just can’t exist
I still remember that last kiss.
Without you, I count the hours
And I watch the death of flowers.
Without you, My heart cries out
For sadness to be dispelled--
Without you, Life means nothing
And I ache with lack of loving.
Without you, There’s no catharsis
Why was I then so heartless?
Without you, There’s only blackness
No salvation from this sadness.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 3:34 PM 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
We started out with Armistead
from the shelter of the trees.
A jackrabbit raced past to the rear,
no dumb bunny was he
The heat rose up to meet us
As we started up the rise-
The prospect of the copse of trees
Before us was the prize.
The flower of Virginia here
displayed upon Parade
We must have looked magnificent
Just before the cannonade
They piled on Double Cannister
and tore holes in our line
We staggered from the weight of shot
that fearful hissing whine..
Then enfilading fire came
From the Yanks behind stone walls
Just then post fences six feet high
briefly caused our charge to stall
Brave **** Gannett was unhorsed
Upon this very spot
Kemper, wounded mortally,
Was retrieved from shell and shot
We made it past the final fence
And up the grassy knoll
Defiant in the cannons mouth
"Turn those guns!" I'm told.
But at that very Moment
General Armistead was downed
The attack lost its momentum
Our wave crested on high ground..
The blue bellies yelled Fredericksburg
As the Crimson tide retraced
Half in Anger, Half in relief
that the challenge had been faced.
The hill before the copse of trees
Pocked with our dead and dying
While the remnants of Picketts men
Towards Longstreets line were filing
Matthew Brady took my photograph
before I was led away
My face a study in defiance
A true man of the gray.
Dec 19, 2011
Dec 19, 2011 at 8:56 PM UTC
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the ***** of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets—
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—
Its mother’s face with Heaven’s collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?
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I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.
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i.
O'
Timely
Apricity;
ii.
Mayest thou
Warm, and blanketeth
Me; as a neonate, as
Thou shalt gorgonize
Me, from within the space,
Ourn embracing is a cataract,
Of heavied chime-together laced.
iii.
Thine speak is comely, Concord
To mine earshot; the copse is
Surrounding, none manor
Needed, just the coney's,
With the delightful tree's,
veneering ourn cot.
iv.
Exhaling all ourn woes
And sorrow's, as if none
Tommorrow; None haste,
And none distaste, house-
Leeks groweth whilst the
Flaxen colored roses follow.
v.
O' oriental Apricity
I'm cold mine lass,
I'm freezing fast;
This winter day
Hath chilled mine
Soul, I needeth thine
Fire-place, to heateth these bones.
Though far-flung, away on stretched water's.
I'm awaiting for thee, mine queen, O' Apricity,
I'm awaiting O' queen, mine swart of the sea, thou holdeth the lock, tis I hath the key, here thou goeth amour', open it up, flyeth on through-setteth me free.
©Brandon Nagley
©Earl Jane Nagley dedicated ( Filipino rose)
©Lonesome poet's poetry
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 5:02 PM UTC
There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts---
How sad this evening.
Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.
Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.
A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.
On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.
At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.
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This pleasant tale is like a little copse:
The honied lines so freshly interlace,
To keep the reader in so sweet a place,
So that he here and there full-hearted stops;
And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops
Come cool and suddenly against his face,
And, by the wandering melody, may trace
Which way the tender-legged linnet hops.
Oh! what a power has white Simplicity!
What mighty power has this gentle story!
I, that do ever feel athirst for glory,
Could at this moment be content to lie
Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings
Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.
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The mist meanders through the copse
Beside the bridge over the brook,
Where both daffodils and snowdrops
Emerge everywhere one looks.
Watched over by weeping willows
Amongst other old ancient trees
A babbling brook gently goes
Winding through woods and valleys.
Further and further, on it flows
Below bridges both old and new,
Meanders through fields and meadows
Blanketed by the morning dew.
All through an awakening park
Warmed now by a weak winter sun
Night creatures leave only their mark,
Bedding down now day has begun.
Silence surrenders to bird song
A sure sign that day is dawning
Lo and behold before too long
Casts of creatures greet the morning.
Dawn gives way to a brand new day
Leaving a slight sense of sorrow
As magic moments slip away;
A different dawn tomorrow.
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 3:49 AM UTC
‘Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.
Hence the only prime
And real love-rhyme
That I know by heart,
And that leaves no smart,
Is the purl of a little valley fall
About three spans wide and two spans tall
Over a table of solid rock,
And into a scoop of the self-same block;
The purl of a runlet that never ceases
In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;
With a hollow boiling voice it speaks
And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.’
‘And why gives this the only prime
Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?
And why does plunging your arm in a bowl
Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?’
‘Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,
Though precisely where none ever has known,
Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,
And by now with its smoothness opalized,
Is a grinking glass:
For, down that pass
My lover and I
Walked under a sky
Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,
In the burn of August, to paint the scene,
And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine;
And when we had drunk from the glass together,
Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,
Where it slipped, and it sank, and was past recall,
Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
And, as said, if I ****** my arm below
Cold water in a basin or bowl, a throe
From the past awakens a sense of that time,
And the glass we used, and the cascade’s rhyme.
The basin seems the pool, and its edge
The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
And the leafy pattern of china-ware
The hanging plants that were bathing there.
‘By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
There lies intact that chalice of ours,
And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
Persistently sung by the fall above.
No lip has touched it since his and mine
In turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.’
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In the sordid caste
of flowers, the wild
rise on their stems
for a name,
and rupture into light
through the copse of partridge berry
distances tumble over the wet colours,
like mauve tongues
along the thighs of an eventual sunrise,
that comes moaning free
of the unforgiving dark,
in the wet jazz soliloquies of light
and suddenly, through the lips
of Septembers lovely grind,
to bind the Summers cunning wounds,
your hands reach far into the blue hordes
of wildflower,
and redolent fevers, kindled
by some hummingbirds blurred
and exquisite agitation, you
are the body of my confession
and South
marks the same
unfathomable distance home,
over the prairie
that tonight grants calm,
in the balm of C minor,
a mute, sibilant liquid dream of rain
soothes, my voice grows hoarse
and stills, though from the hush of willows,
rasps the vast reservoir of wind,
as the jay, a blue throb in the holly, casts
my hue in lush cascades of desperate, abandoned braids
lift the fevers muslin depths
and these unaccompanied words, sing
a sonata
proverbs in petty sounds
spill from a cracked jaw
and a parched throat,
in the Sabbath of the heart
heaven never thought to map
this distance and its jubilee
over wildflowers, I bear
your name to stay the mauve hour
of devout crickets,
crouched in the rain,
dying in the thick falsetto of mist
and the sordid hum of birds, dim
in their hollow cote,
and sudden blue, sudden blue,
how I adore you....
Jan 15, 2013
Jan 15, 2013 at 1:03 PM UTC
1.
Before I knew he had.
His flight trailed off into a Utah
Sunrise. He left behind a little strand
Of thought, and, in a cramped, amber room that saw
Long talks of topics that soon thinned grey,
A set of dog-eared books has been put down.
Books that brought nearer to my thought his own,
While Interstate-5 grated the ground.
2.
He must have, as the plane touched the runway,
Felt the dawn’s shudder fracture his young bones,
His thoughts turning to those dog-eared days;
The seemingly endless months full of groans,
As they should have been, being spent alone;
And that set of books, at least it would seem,
Ignited the wick on which our passions gleam.
3.
These six years past since they took him away
Held minutes like a needle in plied dust.
There’s something in the spring that brings decay:
The outward beauty of the world just
Clouds the mind’s loss within the spinning gust
That all the blooming flowers usher in.
Then the rain comes...
4.
As the 5’s scratch cracks up the drying earth,
I recall Nietzsche, Guevara, Burgess:
Men who’d not anticipated births
Inside my brother and I like cypress
Trees, evergreen and coniferous, we
Drop seeds year-round. The setting Utah sun,
Barely audible, gasps in the copse.
He’s with me now. What’s done is done.
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 3:37 PM UTC
Harsh wind screaming
moaning
with the crisp bite of Autumn night
Dark shadows dancing
tossing
with the branches of bare grey Elms
The lanes are winding
uncurling
in the pale orange glow of headlights
Sudden hedgerows
green
edging the limits of the night
Power-cut darkness all around
silhouettes
strange in the headlight beam
No farm lights distant on the Tor
guiding
beacons of open field and place
Cottages shuddering their thatching
thrilled
chimneys smoking message-morse
Pub signs banging wildly
flapping
in a crazy dance
inside candles flickering
distorted
patterns in tiny panes of rounded glass
Old stone steeple steady
dull toned bell
catching
a ride on the wind to the copse
And still the lanes thread out
beam-born
a ribbon of pebbles and stone
stretching into the night
until they melt
into the flat black tarmac
of the motorway.
Nov 15, 2016
Nov 15, 2016 at 5:35 AM UTC
The snow was blowing among the trees. In large wet flakes it tumbled down.
My captain turned, as if to speak, but from his lips there came no sound.
A red rose bloomed there on his chest -staining dark the Wehrmacht grey.
I looked in horror as he pitched face forward to the ground.
****** I yelled and ducked for cover. The copse of trees echoed the sound.
Somewhere out there he awaits; the Devil’s son, the cunning foe.
He’s stalked our party for three days yet leaves no footprints in the snow.
I served in France in Forty –one; before these Russians were our foes.
I shiver but it’s not from fear; it’s just that we lack winter clothes.
I motion briskly with my right hand, I think the shooter must be there
my corporal nods and starts to move; perhaps he can outflank this man.
My soul is black for I’ve done some things;
for which I once would have been ashamed.
I saw the Jewess try to shield her babe
as I placed them in a common grave.
This man out there, a warrior; he risks his life upon command.
He is clever, this one, he waits his chance.
Either its him or me that’s dammed.
The drifting snowflakes hide his breath.
But He’s still out there this I know.
My Captain lies still upon the earth
and is slowly covered by the snow.
We are soldiers who risk our lives.
We sacrifice for the Fatherland.
We dream of a woman and a warm bed
Never of Death’s cold clammy hand
My men cry out, the fox is flushed
The ****** has at last been found.
It’s true what they say of the bullet that kills you;
I never even heard the sound.
May 5, 2016
May 5, 2016 at 10:17 PM UTC
when that hopefully ecofriendly R.I.P becomes my final home
whether bios urn
or spirit seed
or any trendy tree from corpse to copse,
from dust to leaves
or better than
a crematorial commode --for fresher air and fuel for brighter flames
transplanted into other selves
redressed in mushroom spore-suit
seeded with the genes of generations hence and past,
piercing veils to fruit above again,
a mycophile to the last--
i will have lived with growth in mind,
that firm amorphous
ground opining green
to kindly live and die in kind
foment another view,
encompass monumental evanesce
supernal tablets branching neo-dolmen ethernexusnets beyond the r00ts
barking technoshaman psychic rings about a fiberoptic rosey,
perhaps a sappier refrain for finer silica domains
to sing along and echo Dryads doting long ago,
in threaded tones the make-remaking fold
of earthenborn rekindled kin of stars
decided to invent to cater otherworldly themes
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 11:13 PM UTC
It is a pleasant place to lie,
amidst a copse of Olive trees.
The tears of muses, never dried,
have effaced the writing from your stone.
These hills about once knew your step,
your strong and confident poet’s stride.
Robert, the Royal Fusilier,
Once thought dead, but you’d survived.
Your home is a museum now,
Your Black Cordoban hangs on the wall.
I step into the little den
where you finally said farewell to all.
Looking out your window I
Espy a naked maiden flee.
Skin starkly white with Golden hair-
The White goddess? Could it be?
At any rate, a comely lass,
Beauty to whet a poet’s pen
I’ve heard you were inspired thus
by lovely muses, now and then.
Your domestic arrangements
Were quite strange;
celibate infidelity.
I’ll admit that’s one I haven’t tried.
Nor would I like to, honestly.
But your genius can’t be ignored.
by honest literary men.
I’ve spend hours in Ancient Rome
transported by your fertile pen.
Farewell Robert, Beryl too
You knew he’d be yours at the end.
Muses fuel a poet’s pen
But cannot love as wives may do.
Apr 22, 2012
Apr 22, 2012 at 4:49 PM UTC
before I knew he had.
His flight trailed off into a Utah
sunrise. He left behind a little strand
of thought, and, in a cramped, amber room that saw
long talks of topics that soon thinned grey,
a set of dog-eared books has been put down.
Books that brought nearer to my thought his own,
while somewhere Interstate-5 grates ‘cross the ground.
I sleep there still, although I left for good.
That house to this day asks me where he was.
Their smiles, the little comfort that they could
give, were emptier than their words. Often
I feel the vague pulse of their ragged stares –
torn, threadbare they unravel in the air
to mask their faces: that inner decree
which shades the truth. Where and how’d they ever grow wrong?
He must have, as the plane touched the runway,
felt the dawn’s shudder fracture his young bones,
his thoughts turning to those dog-earing days.
The seemingly endless months full of groans,
as they should have been, being spent alone.
And that set of books, at least it would seem,
ignited the wick on which our passions gleam –
slate-grey regards.
These six years past since they took him away
held minutes like a needle in plied dust.
There’s something in the spring that brings decay
here. The outward beauty of the world just
clouds the mind’s loss within the spinning gust
that all the blooming flowers usher in.
Then the rain comes –
in spitters and spats it spins the spire.
When gone the white-wick’s still on fire.
As the 5’s scratch cracks up the drying earth,
I recall Nietzsche, Guevara, Burgess.
Famed men who’d not anticipated births
inside my brother and I like cypress
trees, evergreen and coniferous we
drop seeds year-round. The setting Utah sun,
barely audible, gasps in the copse.
He’s with me now. What’s done is done.
Jul 4, 2012
Jul 4, 2012 at 7:53 AM UTC
William raked the leaves and dry pine needles in silence, a reverence that, to him, seemed simple and appropriate in the cemetery. Mother was close by arranging silk flowers to place on his grandparents' graves, a festive red splash of color in celebration of the Christmas season despite the unseasonal warmth and humidity in the air.
"Can you believe the weather," he calls out to his mother. "Grandma and Papa would have loved this."
"Yes, they would have," she replied. "I'm ready if you are. We still have some errands to run before it gets too much later."
William bent down and scooped the loose pile of nature's molt off the graves and placed it in an old plastic shopping bag. "I'll go throw this in the trash while you set up the flowers, that way we can get moving with the day."
Mother set to work on the bronze vase as William walked away to the trash can ten yards distant. He was grateful for her presence, not just for the help in maintaining the graves, but also because it reinforced to him that she was the best mom he could have ever asked for. The graves were not those of her parents, but belonged to his father's parents. William thought it was a great show of respect for her to help him. Father had passed a year before either of his parents. Not that it much mattered; William's father had seemingly forgotten both William and his own parents somewhere along the way. Father had given all his attention to his new wife for the last few years of his life.
"All done! Just let me pull these last few weeds before we go," Mother said. William nodded acknowledgement and absent-mindedly wandered the surrounding grave plots. Unknown faces of unfamiliar names blanketed the grounds nearby. He found himself suddenly wondering if he had even visited his father's grave. Feeling ashamed, he began searching in earnest for the site of his father's final resting place. He thought it was close at hand, perhaps in the vicinity of the small copse of trees a few dozen yards east of his grandparents.
After a ten minute search, William realized he could not find it on his own. Mom will know, I will ask her, he thought. "Hey Mom, I know this sounds weird, but I can't find Dad's grave...where is it?"
Mother cocked her head slightly, and after a brief pause says, "Will, your father was cremated, and your stepmother told us that she spread the ashes at sea, but we can't be sure that she really did."
"Oh. I forgot."
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 8:58 PM UTC
They don't understand, no they don't
It's not that high, maybe from where you are
From the hole that I'm in, it is
It's not just the height, it's also the depth that I'm in
They don't understand, no they can't
It's not that deep, yes, from your comfort it's not.
It's so deep and dark I can't see the supposed ladder Infront of me
They don't understand, maybe they will never .
Maybe it's all an excuse, maybe it's not that deep
Maybe it's not that high and I can reach out
Maybe my hands aren't that crooked that I can hold on
Maybe my feet aren't that broken that I can stand and walk
Maybe my heart isn't shutting down
Maybe I'm not drifting out of consciousness.
Maybe just maybe I'm not dead
Stay positive you said
This copse lives
Apr 8, 2022
Apr 8, 2022 at 6:57 PM UTC
Just a young sapling
With an unhindered view,
It chose its position
And then grew where it grew.
Just a singular tree,
Not in a forest, copse or wood,
Preferring its own company,
It stood where it stood.
A tree in its infancy
Coping with life’s highs and lows,
It takes on all challenges
And it grows where it grows.
Standing resolutely alone,
An independent tree,
This somehow reminds,
Reminds me of me.
Jul 4, 2021
Jul 4, 2021 at 1:49 AM UTC