Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Marshal Gebbie Dec 2009
For Basil@Egmont

Old school hotelier, conservationist, mountain man.


Festooning drapes of weeping moss
Hang damply from the trees
Cascading lengths of dripping fern
Bring wetness to your knees
The clutching boughs of gnarled branch
The olive greens and damp
The winding path meanders up
This mountain's rocky ramp

Grey boulders in the river bed
The rush of torrents fast,
The song of falling waters
Plummeting into the past.
The flash of brilliant plumage
A  blue kingfisher in a dive
And the tragic death of this field mouse
Means other creatures stay alive.

The mammoth mountain hangs above
The snow is clean and white
The cornice shadow aqua blue
Ridge ice is sunlight bright
The summit wind is blowing hard
The snow is curling round
To recreate a billowed crown
Atop that seaward mound.

A dancing *** is eyeing me,
Impossibly it clings
Inverted from a totara trunk
With rapid flitting wings.
Exploding from it's hiding place
A ponderous pigeon *****
And weaves it's way between the boughs
With noisy wing tip slaps

The magic of this secret place
Is the drama in the air,
The solitude of teeming life
In green-ness everywhere.
The hardness of the freezing night
The harshness of the wind,
The grandeur of it's wilderness
Paints splendor as it's sin.

Taranaki's goblin forest
Is resplendent in it's garb
Of emerald green and turquois-ness
And rugged rocks and shard,
Cascading rivers, waterfalls
In sweeping walls of trees
Where pools of still transparency
Bring you breathless to your knees.

Where Egmont's goblin forest
Will make your spirits sing
And the urge to climb another mile
Will reward you with something
You had not bargained for in visiting
This remote and splendid place,
......It will reward you with a warm,
And knowing smile upon your face.

Marshalg
Dawson Falls Romantic Hotel
Mt. Taranaki
15th September 2008
Jayne E Apr 2019
With fickle Freddy Frosts first showing
and the rising of ******* and
limbs fine tactile hairs, laguna,
filaments of sensation *****
quivering and striving
stretching toward a now absent warmth,

she always did have her sunny side showing, bare legs tucked under her
buttocks, leaning back on her hands
under that big Totara tree, face tilting
skyward and sandals kicked aside,

searching out her brighter sunny day
even now, with leaves falling down
the autumnal mix of ambers
Loamy greens and wooded browns
the earth cool and damp underfoot
her naked legs, arms defiant, barely crying for freedom!

Shivered morn's and eve's descend quickly
winters first indicators bringing
a refusal to employ blankets
hope tightly clinging to summers
silk sheets from Portugal,
feather light, soft as air,
just how she likes her thread count
high and expensive, sumptous,
(her pedantic obsession with fine linens)
totally ineffectual as calefactor,
so, she shivers on stubborn as ever,
Stay summer! Stay!

Even her loyal steadfast cicadas
have fallen silent now, summers last guard fallen to shortened days
and longer lonelier cool nights,
it is now she starts to miss a warm body
companionship, a worthy bedfellow
one who will not protest her cold toes
vicious advances on their warmer flesh

The sacrifice well worth the reward
of her warmest, ardent affections
tender embraces and softly spoken
murmurings of love and passion,
her full surrender to your body
with hers, she gives good, good love,
both body and mined soul deep too.

The countdown to clocks pushed onwards
pulls a wustful sigh from blueish lips
she is underdressed, flimsy chiffon
on a day made for heavier cloths
persists with summer daydreaming
of warm strong hands restoring her joy
under cold nights cloaked bed covers,
hot stolen kisses from a winter lover.

J.C. "littlebird" 05/04/2019.
Asha Ryder Sep 2012
Her words pour out jagged and broken
as she stumbles into her thoughts
which dangle like barbed wire cobwebs
waiting to tear through her throat
and puncture the silence.

Sometimes she goes into the city
just to let herself be battered
by its innumerable jostling souls
who cannot meet, but only collide.
She will search every passing face for her reflection,
and finding none,
Will seek refuge in the limbs of an ancient Totara tree
and bathe herself in solitude.

— The End —