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Keiya Tasire Jan 2019
On the land of our family
Are the ashes of generations.
Each generation planted with the saplings of the trees  
The Cedar, The Fir, The Larch, and The Mountain Ash
Standing regal in the sun's early light.

It is a new day
Standing under their boughs
Comforted by ancestral arms touching
In a circle of Love and Light.

What is emerging?
Sprouting up from under the Sphagnum  
It's a seed! Raising its head
Peeking up, and stretching towards the sun.

Ever upward it expands
Though nights of rain and clouds.
Through days of heat and seeming drought.

Yet the seedling grows and endures
Bent by the late summer winds
The fiber of wisdom ever increasing within its core.

At the end of Indian Summer
The frost begins to unleash its chill
The young sapling freezes
As the blanket of white thickens across the land.

With the weight upon it's back
In humility the sapling bends low to kiss the earth.
Bravely holding this asana in the coldest of the winter days.

Today by my window
I am basking in the sunlight of a very early spring,
Bright are shimmering reflections of sunlight snow.

Squinting, with eyes half open and eyes half closed
The small rainbows begin to dance
Between each pair of lashes.
A delighted inner child
Chuckling with joy.

I can hear the sound of water running  
And ice falling from the rooftops above.
The snow is finally melting!

The tall cedar boughs dance with the wind.
Up and down, releasing their winter coats
As Ice crystals floating on the air.

Gazing across the white wonder
To the very spot where I last saw our little tree
What of the little seedling?
Is it still alive?
Or broken and crush by the ice and snow?
My musing over the Cedar Sapling
Shifted with a gasping surprise
It sprung up!
Announcing "I am still alive!"
And my inner voice giggled with delight.

Hum, I wonder
Do trees have a heart?
Do they perceive beyond their bark?
Do they remember?
In this very moment the sapling's sudden appearance
During my musing seemed to express, "Yes!"

Is it just a deep enduring feeling
That the elders of this world
Are the 400+ year old Cedars
Keeping their long record of time?

My dear little sapling
may you continue to grow into magnificence.
I will only see your first 100 years.

For your last four hundred
Allow me to lie at your roots
Under the Sphagnum from which you sprung.

And my children will water flowers at your base
That you may grow as the guardian of the ancestor
Who planted your seed and watched you grow.

Yes, the very one who is now delighted that you
Have popped up from under your blanket of snow.
The winter is giving to an early spring here where we live. There is a young sapling outside my kitchen window I have watched for two years now. This is the second season I have watched it pop up out from under the blanket of snow that has covered it thickly each winter. I am amazed at its flexibility, strength, endurance and tenacity. As the years pass I will continue to watch over this little tree with the desire that it will watch over me when I have passed and my body has been laid to rest.
Caleb Hess Sep 2018
I don’t like puzzles, not this kind, anyway. My thoughts are puzzle pieces and these days are prophetic. What is my prophecy? Where I am supposed to be is far away, maybe. I feel that life is on autopilot.
LOST! Where the hell am I?
I don’t think that I’m meant to be here, nothing goes as planned. I see everything as if it was made of glass, I see it all. Surrounded by mirrors, I’m discombobulated. As I see everything, everything is everywhere. I know how to get there so I go but somehow I become lost… but it was so clear. The mirrors always catch my eye, I guess.
At some point I steered off during my prophecy and now the gods can’t seem to locate me. How will I ever get back? I’m trailed off in a simulation living in the background, I feel. I don’t want this, I want to be the main character of my own life.
I. Feel. So… l o s t.
I  am  getting  nowhere.
END
Caroline Grace May 2010
Step down from the drone of mid-afternoon sting
to the cool of a bowl in the shade of a spell
where the sphagnum-crawled rocks crouch with buttermilk blooms
and the bog violets pour out their purple perfume.
You will find in the hollow a sparkling jewel
erratically spattered with glittering pools
where the shards of the sun slice their way through the haze
to repose on the throne of the hummock's soft plush.
And all is deep-rooted in moist verdant freshness
with climbers entwined around cascades of vines
and all that's contained in the small mountain's hollow
perpetually thrives in the gold dappled light.
Creep  cautiously down to that cavernous bower
immerse all your senses and drench every pore
with the contrast of coolness and shimmering beauty
where you'll tremble and shiver for want of the heat.
copyright © Caroline Grace 2010
Lawrence Hall May 2019
The drunken Navy cook was suppurative 1 with tats
And the supply boat was always sunk or late
Our officers would not release the c-rats
So one night someone forced a lock, and we ate:

Tin-can crackers, mother////ers and ham
Mystery meat with beans in tomato sauce
Beans and baby ////s and some heavy jam
Beef slices with potatoes in sphagnum moss

But Lieutenant Macbeth, a lord over the earth
Found us, and then he much displaced the mirth 2


1 Cf. Chaucer’s cook in The Canterbury Tales
2 Macbeth III.IV.132-133

In the end, Lieutenant Macbeth (not the ////’s real name) could do nothing since the looted c-rats were so widely distributed that he’d have had to write up the entire unit.
Lucius Furius Jan 2018
Adam and Eve

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths, ...
--from Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning"

In Eden fair did Adam and Eve
live in perfect harmony.

"No plant or animal devoureth we,
only ripe fruit as falls from the tree."

By bright-green lily-pads in sphagnum bogs
the herons waded gracefully,
bullfrogs croaked their deep, clear calls;
bluebells, delicate yellow buttercups
were rampant; larks sang in the mulberries.

"No pain or hunger knew we there,
only the sameness of Eden fair."

Even the bounty, the beauty, the civility,
the rich perfection, stretching out like the wall
of the great oval garden, day after day,
year after year to eternity,
grew tiresome.

"No shame in our nakedness knew we ...
nor lust, nor desire, nor carnality."

It's the exogamous, the unfamiliar,
which stirs in us the deepest passion,
the basso continuo of mortality
which gives to desire its piquancy
--of which they knew nothing in deathless Eden.

"We wanted to look outside the wall.
We didn't mean from God's grace to fall."

Their lack of control, their disrespect
invited tragedy....
But to deny what one feels,
to deny what one is
is to risk even greater calamity....

"God expelled us from the Garden.
Now we'll know death and all that's human."

Discord ... despair.... Are you better off?
Coaxing grain from the cracked, parched earth?
Maybe you paid too much for your freedom?...
Maybe you wish you were back in the Garden?...

"There be good inside the Garden;
there be good outside....
There is no perfect Eden."
Hear Jerry/Lucius read this poem (at https://humanist-art.org/old-site/audio/SoF_095_adam_and_eve.MP3 ).    This poem is part of the Scraps of Faith collection of poems ( humanist-art.org/audio/SoF_095_adam_and_eve.MP3 ).
Universe Poems Apr 2022
Take a seat
Feel the soil
Consult the moisture boss
Peat moss
Care for your plants
Nature does not leave it to chance
Sphagnum moss
No digging up this boss
Removed with eco in mind
Habitat let's be kind
Harvesters today,
drain swamp land anyway
While taking sphagnum,
they remove peat moss
Habitat loss
Maxing out profits,
and their time,
in swamp wellie lockets

© 2022 Carol Natasha Diviney
Michael Shave Jun 26
Part one
Caesar cries. An anguish riven home
By news that through the city has been spread
Of Varus and his legions who now lie dead
In far off Gaul. Those men they stare
With sightless eyes. Yearning souls bereft of home.
Poor, ****** souls; yet once the pride of Rome.

How, might you ask, those eagles lost and on that mound
In sacrifice laid out before the sacred Oak?
There, where Wotan took the spear and spoke
Foretelling and demanding ****** slaughter.
Who was it listened, then with cruel, deliberate treachery found
‘Midst Teutorburg, that frenzied, ****** killing ground?

Where Ash and Oak, where Beech and Thorn
Loom from the mist which lingers there.
Where shadowed places, dark and cold
Hide sphagnum bog; the wolf, the bear
Which pad and snuffle through the threatening gloom.
Fool Varus listening to advice
Gave up his men for sacrifice.

Arminius, the Roman name they gave him.
Taken hostage when a child.
Taught Roman ways, imbued the culture.
Disciplined life, not growing wild,
Why though was it no one saw
His worship still of Wotan, Lord of Frenzy, and of War.

This the man who Varus sponsored,
This the man, his friend, his guide.
He knew the tribesmen, spoke their language,
Cherusci by birth, by pride.
Arminius, whom the Romans fostered.
Arminius, he was why they died.

—————

Teutorburger Wald
(Part Two)

Now that Oak, that shattered Oak;
Lightning struck, it ancient stands
With branches blood stained, ground now littered;
Iron rusted that once glittered,
Lethal weapons cast aside,
And bones, bleached bones, of those who died.

From Vetera, march away,
Not thinking of their fate that day.
Proud columns, eagles high, they leave;
(Unseen the loom the Parcae weave.)
The Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth, all
Destined by spear and axe to fall.

They march ‘neath Ash and ‘neath the Oak,
‘Neath Beech, through tangled Thorn.
And splash a muddied, puddled trail,
A trail that’s not been worn.
By chanted cadence they keep step
These men all Roman sworn.

For Varus has received the news
Of tribal rebels to his North.
Arminius, questioned for his views,
Suggests a detour, then to sally forth.
And so, with Cherusci their guide
The legions march. Not knowing that their friend has lied.

—————

Teutorburger Wald
(Part Three)

Nighttime now doth through darkening woodland creep.
The bear and wolf unsheathe sharp claw.
While those in ambush take their turn to sleep
And from cruel sky the unrelenting rain doth pour.
The Romans, unaware, in camp they curse and try
To keep their slingshots and their bowstrings dry.

This while Varus tosses, uneasy in the night,
Kept awake by screaming echoes from his past?
Does Arminius going missing mean there’s going to be a fight?
And will the coming morning be his last?
Who knows the fate of man, or men.
Have omina been ignored? If so why, and when.

And now ‘tween wood and bog marsh, over heathland
March those legions, eagles high;
Cadence calling, stumbling, splashing,
Rain, it pours from lowering sky.
Heavens rumble, lightning flickers.
Spears are launched, and thus men die.

Closely formed, penned in tight,
No room to ******, no room to fight.
The writhing wounded, *****, blood;
Trampled entrails and the mud.
Thor’s rumbling thunder, drenching rain;
Lightning flashing then the pain.

Beneath locked shields they curse, the dying;
Contorted, Romans, screaming, crying.
Hurtling spears, the butcher’s list
Writ large in terror, Wotan’s fist.
And Mjolnir, loved, caressed by Thor,
Beloved of Aesir, God of War.

Deprived of bow, the use of sling;
Constrained twixt hillside and a marshy bog;
Unfocused and unable thus to bring
To bear their usual clarity of pressure, it’s just fog - a fog
Of mindless terror; which is why they scream.
And for Arminius this, a culmination of his dream.

And so in frenzied lust it ends, the killing;
Vengeful hatred why they fought.
The tribes involved - Arminius willing -,
Cherusci, Chatti, Marsi, they all sought
From ambush and by spear and axe
To end the hated Roman’s rule, the hated Roman’s tax.

—————
Teutorburger Wald
(Part four) German vengeance

And thus in Wotan’s sacred grove
In wicker baskets freshly wove,
Sullen, proud but anguished men
Are jeered at, taunted, howled at, then
Disbelieving of the savage ire
Die shrieking, screaming, in the fire.

This while warriors roar their boast;
To Odin, Frey and Njord make toast;
And those surrendered by their chiefs:
Now naked, Kneeling, dull of eye;
Rank on rank, axes swinging;
Rank on rank the legions die.

Then, Varus has been found, the cry.
His severed head, it’s held up high.
The tribesmen gloat, they gather round
The spot where Varus, dead, was found.
The body though, to rot  it’s kicked aside,
Deceived, defeated, fated thus his suicide?

—————

Now green grasses grow there where the slain
Once, muddied, bloodied, lay forlorn.
Whispers soft the gentle rain
On Ash, on Beech on Oak on Thorn.
Three legions once stood side by side,
This tranquil glade was where they died.
Quintili Vare, legiones redde!  9 AD. Three legions, each of roughly 5000 men, were en-route to their winter camp.

— The End —