"treeless" poems
Their boat turned in towards us
ready to board our vessel
to take us to their island,
a fastness, craggy, bleak, treeless.
To winter peat fires, gales, darkness,
weird northern tales of gods and trolls,
black nights seared by bright light curtains,
a violent Viking heritage.
A place where cold sea and ocean
overturn the crippled sea stacks,
our lives in the boarding party's
hands and our skilful Shetland pilot.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 9:53 AM UTC
I am like a lone wolf who hastens across the tundra of Northern Hemispheres, with stealth.
Our temperature has risen and the Chinook boldly reveals her austere formation across the vast expanse of alpine variation.
I understand that your customs may be nomadic, as they roam across the treeless plains of baron socialisation.
But will they lead you beyond the West coast of Ecuador?
Therefore, always remember that layers of permanently frozen subsoils are designed for terrestrial corridors of arctic sojourns.
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 12:41 PM UTC
This adventure we're on
through this space we Transit
where compassion seems
to be all shadow
And sadly non-essential
to this Garden of Life
we are growing
that is Bane of music
or sunshine
a treeless desert
Of lost hopes
or even any
realistic design
for any future
we would want
we will need
were hoped for
Nature has been threatened
by the whims of those men
who have no notion
of what will happen
if they allow the oceans
to rise up and dog our steps
into a future
into a world
that we will never again
recognize
Aug 27, 2018
Aug 27, 2018 at 8:42 PM UTC
Lament our random tuesday
– I can't see today the sunny day
of our last spring leaves again
in a treeless pathless meadow
that spring day of silver tounges tarnished.
Dessicated earth is seeping in the blue glass,
the dry cracked plain rising above the sun,
the suns clarity as it is in reality,
and where we have been – I will always remember.
There are no oasis' on my equator.
The Wendigo subdued with pale skill.....
Whose corpse can fail to compare with my soul,
if despair and courage aren't in my heart! -
And if your scent, a mundane beast,
tears at my knees everyday,
and the suns dull golden light,
chilled by a slow approaching wave
for all of our words?
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 4:45 PM UTC
How was it there in Isengard,
Former haven of the proud,
Whose hollowed valley hid the rot
Beneath its treeless hills,
Ancient machinations tunneled far below
The smooth, impervious tower of Saruman,
The Iridescent Dazzler,
Whose quiet words slipped Sauron's thoughts
Inside our weaker minds?
Venom running hot...then changing cold
Within old Saruman on Gandalf's salutation:
"Saruman the White,"
Changing Truth for truths,
Something totally desired.
"I prefer Saruman the White!"
I think old Gandalf said
While he was still "The Gray,"
(Just before his lofty spire stay).
But evil magic has its ends,
Tendrils turn upon themselves,
Vines tangling slow or fast,
Returning to the evil doer's door
While Good climbs steadily to new beginnings
Rooted in the Old and True,
Reaching for the sun.
Old Ents in righteous anger
Broke dams, diverted streams to flood
The war machines of Isengard,
Drove Orcs and Wargs and Trolls to doom,
Drowned the furnaces...
Then, mourning tree-limbed kin,
Greeted Gandalf on his way to greater things,
And pledged themselves to holy war.
Saruman the Proud,
The sooty iridescent,
The abject coward,
Stripped of power,
Fled unrepentant
Into the mists of Middle Earth
While Sauron's eye glared
West and East,
Wraith-seeking
Frodo and
The Ring.
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 9:18 AM UTC
Crater filled with endless dust
Full of nothing, full of rust,
Never ending, but it must,
Deeper down and down.
Leaving grass too far behind,
Somewhere no one else can find,
The ones who crave loneliness pine,
for the remoteness of this place.
Why is it always dark?
Not a sun to set or the quickest spark?
Only lonely--a treeless park,
A grave for distant sunlight.
Making happy seem not right.
Celebrate a starless night.
In cherished darkness, the cold can bite,
in the depths of this caldera.
Maybe something happened there,
A distant fight, an unknown lair,
incomplete and crumbled--the pair.
And waiting for some sun.
But for now let's ignore this awful place,
And forget we ever saw a trace.
An unsolved mystery, a closed case.
We'll erase the crater who lies.
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 4:05 PM UTC
What a torment! Cursed, genetically
Inclined, a loyal slave to her majesty,
A fat striped bottom and little stink for life,
Sent out to push nature’s browned iron wheel,
A pirate looking for the blinding hue,
An endless hunt for that yellow jewel,
I dare you to come back empty handed.
Have you ever heard an infant’s high cry?
Is it hungry for love, is it...is it in pain,
Or is it just an intricate mind-game?
Like a sponge it ***** everything in, but
it’s a sponge, one squeeze is enough, and all’s
poured out, the love, the milk, and the relief,
And the cry is even louder this time
When will the cycle end...only god knows when?
All for the good of the queen, the hive a
Maelstrom of golden words a buzzing non-
sense, I want to be a moth like Crane was,
magnetized by the light of the flame, vice
Versa, either way a courtship divine.
‘One of these hunts!’, I tell you, ‘These **** hunts!’
Like a bombed plane whirling around without
a tail. A pirate spat out by the sea,
dazed and glazed, naked and tangled in sea weeds
Bootless, and his crippled toes chewed off by *****
Plummeting! What a relief! The last buzz!
Let gravity do what it does best, and
crash the brown little treeless leaf on the grass.
.
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 3:07 PM UTC
I sit beneath trees
Because I am treeless
though I have limbs
and a soft smile,
eyes twinkling like shaking leaves
ahead of afternoon sunlight.
I smell the flowers, push them to my face,
Because I am flowerless
though I embrace colors
and shake in a gentle breeze
and shyly greet visitors
by opening up sometimes.
I draw in the sunrise
Because I have a familiar light
That wakes within me.
I give time to the countless plants I pass
Because of their grace and oneness
and selflessness
Because I know these are possible within me,
That pure magic,
Only sweetness.
Apr 22, 2017
Apr 22, 2017 at 2:38 PM UTC
*Before hurricanes
Wind stirs about treeless plains
Little things matter*
Aug 24, 2015
Aug 24, 2015 at 1:20 PM UTC
Today I found a glass bottle
Washed upon the charcoal breakers of Long Beach
Containing a message
Written by a starving man,
Marooned on a treeless island,
Lost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
Which read quite simply
"Please,
Save yourself.
I'm finally free."
May 9, 2012
May 9, 2012 at 3:48 PM UTC
( five new haiku )
1
Overcast
*Rain painting the streets
Colours lost on lonesome roads
Reflects only grey*
2
Dry Season
*Question sails in air
Above late summer flowers
Lone white butterfly*
3
Things Mounting
*Before hurricanes
Wind stirs about treeless plains
Little things matter*
4
Salt beds
*Great oceans moulting
Lost weight of life giving grace
Scales of dead fishes*
5
Caroling
*Little angels come
Alł throughout winter they sing
In tree without leaves*
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 1:49 PM UTC
Vagrant-heart is like
that pigeon---
fluttering wings against
the glass facade
of a high-rise
in humid Mumbai;
the staircase- light
confusing the avian eyes
frail-body
eager to enter
for
making a nest
in the treeless place.
Sep 15, 2017
Sep 15, 2017 at 11:31 AM UTC
she wrote an entire novel
about a man who cut his hand
on a can of sardines
he found in a silent cupboard
of a prairie house abandoned since
the dust bowl, or perhaps since
the eighth day of creation
the can he opened with a rusty blade
he found in yet another home of ghosts
on a treeless lane in Topeka
where he spent
four naked nights
hiding from the cruelest January,
his memories, and the devil
who his mama said eschewed the cold
and he believed her, but built a fire all the same
until a fat ****** sheriff came
and sent him into the night
where a wailing wind waited
and blew him south through the dark
like just another tumbleweed
when he finally
landed, dry and thrashed
in his new sagging palace
the snows had melted,
the winds calmed
there he found fine fodder
in a tin with sailor standing proud
a feast of fish at his feet
was a shame to behead
the mariner with such a dull tool
only to find mush and ancient fetor
anointed by three drops of his red blood
the can demanded in exchange
for its long dead bounty
Sep 27, 2015
Sep 27, 2015 at 2:36 PM UTC
there will be no sounds,
the road is lonely tonight,
travelers will stay off the
asphalt ways, the blackest
of nights
will not be pierced
by headlights
animal eyes will not be bright
spots appearing to float lightly
to escape, in the darkness,
no engine noises will echo in the trees,
and cause mothers to gather their young
and tell them in animal voices why
no one is allowed to go out after dark
even for a family walk to the park,
across the treeless way
where they can play
with garbage cans' contents,
but rather stay in and be content,
with the gathering of fur with breathing
in the still air, restful sounds and a
peace to be shared with care and oh,
but there will be darkness that hearkens
sleep with dreams of play, teeth flashing,
rough fur rising along the spine,
just don't cross that line,
and leave the nest alone tonight,
for even the darkness has teeth that bite.
©DWE112013
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 12:42 AM UTC
We arrived (as the brochure indicated) at a treeless station, only
To find the fond cities dying,
And one or two savage urchins beating
Each other’s faces and tearing clothes.
We learnt later that our relation, Leopold Muckslick,
Having abandoned his job, grew desperately thin, and,
Giving up the Ghost, set himself alight and jumped in the Thames.
(He was unable to greet us.)
After many fretful minutes, filled with the clanging of old bells
and engines letting off steam,
We decided (and not a moment too soon, either) to board a taxi.
As we drove away, a blue-and-white scarfed crowd
of a hundred or more
Began to clash with a blue-and-helmeted crowd of twenty,
at a guess.
Only a side-window of our taxi took a knock
As we screeched beyond the flailing crowds
and cold railings, though
We had realised by then that our journey had no sponsor
And our brochure was a nothing-lyre.
We became preoccupied with Leopold,
With water and with fire.
Oct 11, 2016
Oct 11, 2016 at 2:40 AM UTC
*( five haiku )
1
Overcast
Rain painting the streets
Colours lost on lonesome roads
Reflects only grey
2
Dry Season
Question sails in air
Above late summer flowers
Lone white butterfly
3
Things Mounting
Before hurricanes
Wind stirs about treeless plains
Little things matter
4
Salt beds
Great oceans moulting
Lost weight of life giving grace
Scales of dead fishes
5
Caroling
Little angels come
Alł throughout winter they sing
In tree without leaves*
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 1:55 PM UTC
We are wild and raw for it
Here, in a blazing land,
Sand-burning beaches,
The low colossal sky,
The slow fading of our evenings into night.
Night, when the lapwing calls the world home again
And out of the bay the white gulls fall
Into the ocean, the sea's crawling surge,
Northwards, by currents temperate
And tropical,
The long winding range
That loses its footing in the coastal flats,
In the desert's vast and undulating stride
We are wild and raw for it.
With a sky so blue that you could fall forever
And falling, never fall so far as into its red heart,
Its pumping core, and the majesty
Of bodies skin-tight, raw and moving
In this distant nether-world.
Where the real world ends, our hearts
Plunge fountain-flow into the dance of dreams,
We hold the dancer close, we spin,
Star-tipped and wild beyond the clasp and call,
Beyond the river's bend,
Beyond the treeless hill,
We are wild and raw for it.
Mar 27, 2016
Mar 27, 2016 at 4:08 PM UTC
We have obscured points-of-view
From where we cling so earnest,
To this one rock among the few
That orbits ‘round that furnace.
But when we’re on the other side
Of our boulder, deep in night,
The stars blaze in the sky so wide
Such a majestic, unreal sight.
Lay down sometime, upon the snow,
In a treeless, open place.
As the spinning Earth below
Tries to throw you into space.
Do it now, you’re in your prime.
Take up your position!
If you let go at the perfect time
You’ll fly out on your mission.
Choose a spot that’s cold and clear
Where just last night it snowed.
Then punch out through the stratosphere
And let your head explode.
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 5:51 PM UTC
A tilley lamp
of Venus held,
immaculate, on solemn spurs
commands the fetid soul
to flourish, purged of
rancid frippery,
At last!, that mitred puritan
from white and treeless latitudes
returns a term of Nordic lore
to thorn this morning glorious.
Nov 11, 2017
Nov 11, 2017 at 10:52 AM UTC
Joy and similar discontents
break wheaten on the all-weather
radial steel-reinforced sidewall hum,
on the defog rasping for a service call;
Break on the near treeless plain
stitched loose to the sky with rivets
of silos and grain bins - clouds
dive porpoise behind the rise.
Joy and similar discontents
hang like flowers on a bleach
wood cross surviving another winter
to tread sobbing on the green ditch water.
Every X and Y coordinate of the plains
etched by gravel side-ways and field
entries too rutted and ragged
to suit the conglomerate need
or the tilt houses and stripped clapboard
banging against the thistle, milkweed
and swallowed dreams in the foxgrass,
with turkey buzzards circling thermal overhead.
But the crows plunge faster into red
fresh carrion sloughs of whitetail and ****
to breach at the presence of a larger scavenging -
and each bent marker tells its own tale.
Count the bullet holes and shotgun splatter
in the stops and yields when the road was empty,
when the night was dry, when the callous boys
had time on their hands instead of hog blood
and badger-eyed girls that left after graduation
for the starless haze, crowded parades,
sidewalk shops, umbrellas on the rain side
of things keeping each at arm's length.
But it was never about the city,
never about the glitz and pizzazz
of everything running baffled into gridlock;
less about the thick dumb flannel boys.
It was always about that low fog,
the night eyes in the beams, the manure, chaff
and split seams of the midwest furrows,
the haybales that bob like rafts over the horizon.
Jul 30, 2019
Jul 30, 2019 at 4:38 PM UTC
Welcome home
From the porch you could see
As you sit next to me
And the jittery dog
One side of the sky with clouds waterlogged
The other with cold beams of Light
Spilling through from a great height
Energy through the air
Going to and coming from nowhere
Welcome home
To this great valley
Where the wind goes through your hair
Like familiar fingers
Tensing along your scalp
Where the slopes are steep
To keep you from leaving
Where the bones of your past
Hold the ground up from falling to the Earth's core
Where the winds of your future
Feel like chilly ghosts
Sapping you of heat
Where the quietness of your current self
Echoes through the people you love most
I see you lying on the grass
Naked and vulnerable
Let me lay my hand upon you
To cover you from this storm
Shake no more in this treeless valley
Between the insurmountable slopes
Feb 27, 2017
Feb 27, 2017 at 7:52 PM UTC
Even in the garden of inspiration There will be no second chance..
..to redo that first dance
So don't always wait for the invitation
To step up...to step up and not miss
That awkward and electrifying build-up of the first kiss
What glory will be won by implication
That creates some obstinate need to win it
If you surrender raise the white flag and are still late by 1 minute
Will you be able to dispel the inclination
That persists in what if's.... you had done this
Or might some ironic twist allow something else to miss
Even In The garden of inspiration
Where dreams of butterfly parades
Lends color and pattern and beauty that never fades
And the artistic squirrel renders artistic deviation
By showing off the scrolls which he carefully unrolls
Depictions of treeless wastelands
beyond his controls
As the squirrels all gather to witness his creation
A sad vigil they sit the branches where so often each one dances
I stand chastened by guilt felt
the pain in the eyes - as each one glances
From the barren depiction to me and at our symbiotic relation.
We destroy forests, water... air ....
taking more than our needs
This line of solumn tree dwellers
give back forests by hoarding seeds
So even in the garden of inspiration..
..I cannot see how it will all work out
When the squirrels all stop dancing
And the butterfly parades wilt in the world without shade
Even in the garden of inspiration I can't see past the destruction and decimation
To what should be our greatest creation
And I wonder - if we even care
To really really really look at the state of disrepair
We have allowed ourselves to take for granted
What the animals and birds and fish allowed us to share.
Feb 14, 2017
Feb 14, 2017 at 11:08 PM UTC
To aerate, babble and procrastinate
decluttering man cave *******
welcoming this temperate
(Billy me) idle March thirtieth
tooth house sand nineteen
eventually to accomplish
sorting thru lifetime
worth miscellaneous
papered material former
rainforest, I banish
to the shredder repurposing
once upon a time
stately majestic humongous
dignified cub billed bearish,
yet stern silent taskmasters
razed forest mongers left blemish -
fueling the roaring engines
of western civilization
paper products service
material world feeding bookish
appetite, sans (ironic
knotty twist) printed
hot off the press bulletins,
bestsellers inform boyish
wordsmith, how vast
treeless tracts hasten
global abomination, chopping
degradation, lamentation... brownish
blotches encompass inert naked,
torchered, and zapped
originally pristine realms
overrun by sawyers brutish
Paul Bunyanesque (sporting
as good) fellas carved
cleared, and cropped enormous
swaths back when bullish
intruders displaced indigenous
peoples crowing manifest destiny
as mantra to appease expansionist
predilection frenzied cultish
zero sum game to annex
unbroken wilderness promulgating
feverish gold rush to demolish
wantonly scorching Earth,
whereby present day burgeoning
population irrevocably establish
ruination ushering ominous augury
permeating mine mortal mutterings.
Mar 30, 2019
Mar 30, 2019 at 4:02 PM UTC