"maidenhair" poems
I rode the wings of night on rising air
That carried me from Africa's wild shore;
To fields of meadowsweet and maidenhair
To sing of heaven's dome and ocean's floor.
Spring greets my song with hawthorn flower and briar.
Rewards my voice with nectar-tinted sun;
The thrum of earth's renewal is my lyre
As thaws begin and waters speed to run.
I sing for memories of sultry days
For zebras racing over arid plains.
I sing of England's tepid Summer haze;
Slow-strolling shire horses with plaited manes.
From heaven's heights I sing, for life's divine,
The purest voice, the lightest heart is mine.
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NOTES:
Written on 22nd June 2003. I did some research about where the Willow Warbler goes on its "migration holidays" before writing this sonnet.
Sep 6, 2009
Sep 6, 2009 at 3:14 PM UTC
Wild geraniums collected
in pocket, red painted petal stains
my feet squish, squash in this forest
the earthy mud a mossy sponge
with fern and lichen the trees are hung
upon the ground greening with maidenhair fern
my satchel filled with dainty floral sprigs
in spring the sparrows gathering vine and twig
June's an efflorescent carpeting, soft with lady slippers
in summer the wildflowers and grasses wed
when celebrates all the flying things
wooded bees and butterflies in the sun
sparkling with faceted, glistening wings.
Jun 22, 2016
Jun 22, 2016 at 12:51 PM UTC
Brown oak leaves underfoot, last year's sodden
reminders that newness always ends. But
not today
while the creek, silent in summer, chortles
about last night's rain, full of spring vigor
far below
the limestone bluff edge where
I stand, chert nodules and fractals
peeking through
springy new undergrowth, broke down
limbs, leaf litter and dark soil. I came
for morels
but it's too early, too chill yet. Tomorrow's
predicted sun may bring them out. Early
mayapple
sprouts fool me, draw me to admire other
understory plants: trillium, maidenhair fern,
spring beauty,
johnny jump-up and more whose names
I knew once but forgot. I came alone and
I don't need
names. Names mean nothing without
voices and other ears. I love the silence
I bring here.
Apr 28, 2013
Apr 28, 2013 at 9:54 PM UTC
When I travel far from crowds
find myself grey, in the raining clouds
I run far into the cedar woods
of green and mossy loam
with birds, I fly from storms
deep in a world
sweet with maidenhair ferns
soft the moss, to touch
as newborn rabbit's fur
many the hour
under sparkling trees
of yellow maples glistening
the chirping words, of smallest birds
that I can never see
echo sweet, I dream and sleep
sink into perfect peace
beneath the rainforest canopy
Oct 3, 2015
Oct 3, 2015 at 9:45 AM UTC
I climb the limestone stairs
through an arch in rock,
into the earth’s womb,
pass through to a surprise:
George loves Lisa painted on a wall.
I wonder, did he ever tell her?
Did she ever know or think of him,
raise a brood of screaming children?
Did they kiss near wild ginger
above the stony apse?
Did lady’s slipper orchids
adorn their meeting place
where deer drink from rocky cisterns?
Did their love wither like maidenhair fern,
delicate as English Lace?
The symbols have outlived the moment.
There is only today, only
the murmur of water underground,
my finding one trickle into a pool.
I never knew this George or Lisa.
The rock bears their names in silence,
names the stream forgot long ago.
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 7:40 AM UTC
The grave they kept on the lonely beach
Lay under a foot of lime,
Most of the pile had washed away
With rain, and the tides of time,
It had been so long since its stone was laid
As a warning to who went there,
The rough-cut name had begun to fade,
To the solitary word, ‘Despair!’
It said, ‘Despair if you dig it up,
Despair if you set it free,
It savaged the girl called Maidenhair
It ravaged this fair country,
It roamed the farms at the dead of night
And tore into sheep and hogs,
The farmers called it the devil’s blight
When they found their blood-spattered dogs.
The only monk that was left to tend
The grave, now lay in the church,
His Order gone, now the only one
To fend off the tidal surge.
The church was almost a ruin since
It had shattered the oak-backed doors,
And blasted the Brothers altar with
Its devils breath, and its claws.
But the monk lay ill, and he knew full well
He never could make the beach,
To pile the lime on the Beast of Time
And the sea would surely breach.
His fellow monks were all laid in clay
On the upper side of the cliff,
Their duty done, they had one by one
Passed on, and lay cold and stiff.
A crack appeared in the bed of lime
With a rush of air from the shore,
And something groaned with an eerie moan,
The seed of the devil’s spore.
A whisp rose out of the open grave
To join with a gully breeze,
That sent it whirling along a wave
And into a grove of trees.
And then an ominous rumble rose
As a whirlwind formed on high,
It whipped the waves to a surly peak
As it rose to blacken the sky,
A tempest, such as had never been
Tore trees, like beeches and birch,
And cut a swathe like the path it paved,
On its wayward way to the church.
The monk lay there with his gilded cross
As he heard the beast outside,
It gave a roar by the shattered door
And the monk had almost died.
But a gentle hand took the cross from him,
A hand that was soft and fair,
And held it up to the beast so grim,
The ghost of Maidenhair.
It shuddered once as she stood with ease
And the cross then drove it back,
The whirlwind died to a gully breeze
As it fled back down the track.
It seemed confused, and it seemed to lose
Its overwhelming reach,
And sank back into its limestone grave
On that long deserted beach.
The sea had battered the arching cliff
Hung over that limestone shore,
It now collapsed in a final lapse
With the monks who’d passed before.
And beneath a thousand tons of earth
That is holding off the sea,
There’s a rough-cut stone that says, ‘Despair,
Despair if you let it free!’
David Lewis Paget
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 4:22 AM UTC