"woodland" poems
The first sorrow of autumn
Is the slow goodbye
Of the garden who stands so long in the evening-
A brown poppy head,
The stalk of a lily,
And still cannot go.
The second sorrow
Is the empty feet
Of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his brothers.
The woodland of gold
Is folded in feathers
With its head in a bag.
And the third sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the sun who has gathered the birds and who gathers
The minutes of evening,
The golden and holy
Ground of the picture.
The fourth sorrow
Is the pond gone black
Ruined and sunken the city of water-
The beetle's palace,
The catacombs
Of the dragonfly.
And the fifth sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp.
One day it's gone.
It has only left litter-
Firewood, tentpoles.
And the sixth sorrow
Is the fox's sorrow
The joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds,
The hooves that pound
Till earth closes her ear
To the fox's prayer.
And the seventh sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the window
As the year packs up
Like a tatty fairground
That came for the children.
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Lovely dainty Spanish needle
With your yellow flower and white,
Dew bedecked and softly sleeping,
Do you think of me to-night?
Shadowed by the spreading mango,
Nodding o'er the rippling stream,
Tell me, dear plant of my childhood,
Do you of the exile dream?
Do you see me by the brook's side
Catching crayfish 'neath the stone,
As you did the day you whispered:
Leave the harmless dears alone?
Do you see me in the meadow
Coming from the woodland spring
With a bamboo on my shoulder
And a pail slung from a string?
Do you see me all expectant
Lying in an orange grove,
While the swee-swees sing above me,
Waiting for my elf-eyed love?
Lovely dainty Spanish needle,
Source to me of sweet delight,
In your far-off sunny southland
Do you dream of me to-night?
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I took the left path where hydrangeas grew and sleepy primroses under woods, edged shady trees.
The empty stream ran quietly dry
With grass cuttings piling high.
If one peeped, one would find tiny creatures
To cast a sparkle here and there, a delight.
So on tip-toe, with sandels bent
Up high I reached to take
The plastic fairy as she twirled a pirouette
In a theatre made by chance.
Reflected in a silver mirror intwinned with ivy branch
A mottled foal tends his dreams and Chrismas robin chirps.
My brother took the right hand path where the trees grew fruit
Ripe berries from the gooseberry bush bulged their prickles.
Dangling from hawthorn now a cowboy with a hat
Looking for his fellow Indian with the yellow back sack.
Sheep gather in a hollow, dark, protected from the sun
And Mr toad, now lost of paint, has turned a bit glum.
And so we leave our woodland friends and travel up the slope
Winding round the rose bed and goldfish where they float.
Then up we climb, the middle route, to jump the pruned clipped
Hedge.
The lawn divided in two halves, a contemporary taste.
Now we're nearly at that place where if one was to turn
Could see down across the land
To the sea and sand.
Of all the beauties that I've known
Nothing beats this Island home.
Love Mary x
My grandfather’s retirement bungalow was in Totland Isle of Wight.
It was named Innisfail meaning ‘Isle of Ireland’.
Behind, the garden led down to magical and delightful to children who came as visitors. My grandfather would prepare this woodland with some suitable surprises.
The garden and woodland deserved its own name and in retrospect
Is now named ‘Innislandia’ to suggest a separate, mysterious land.
Beyond the real world.
In the poem A Country Lane on page 8 the latched gate is the back gate to my grandparent’s garden and bungalow in Totland as above.
Jun 23, 2018
Jun 23, 2018 at 7:57 AM UTC
Dear Pickle,
You are making my face sour. Mom is mad at you for skipping school and I have to talk her down again.
Maybe next time you can write me a 1200 word essay on "How stupid your decisions are", So I can mark it up with red pen before you lose grades on your ribs.
Sister, you need to calm your *** down, because the world isn't a race and the underdog doesn't always come in first, or even second.
But take a second to stop breathing that smoke you call air, everybody is choking on the smell of teen-spirit.
The tattoos not yet ingaved in your skin will serve as a reminder of how you took last place in a family full of sharp broken pieces of glass.
I tell Mom "Don't worry, it's just a phase, she just needs a second to find her place, in this world" But, at this rate, I'm not sure you will.
Because, people will knock on your door and hand you bottles of quick fixes and Novocaine, and I hope that this poem isn't in vain to serve as a reminder of that little girl that still caught fireflies in her teeth.
And I am sorry I left for 3 years without watching your molecules multiply, but I wrote my times tables on the back of my diploma for you to study.
That 6 year old girl with woodland creature cheeks hasn't been forgotten.
That 6 year old girl who never failed to puke in the car after a glass of milk hasn't been forgotten.
That 6 year old girl that cried every time we told anyone you are cat food under the kitchen table hasn't been forgotten.
I am sorry, can you bring her back now?
And for me, could you stop making Mom cry, she has watered so many Forget-me-nots that I am afraid her roots are drowning.
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate all the time you bared swords and shields to defend me against the stereotypes that threatened to staple them themselves to the inside of our cheeks, but come on...get your **** together.
We are blood-brothers...with vaginas.
Don't you dare break that bond because if you do I will lock you in the closet, turn the lights of and leave you in there screaming and crying until the rebellion leaves your bladder.
I'm your sister, not your mother. I will not birth any more brother screw-ups for you to father.
Love,
Vinegar.
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 2:39 PM UTC
running
deliquescing into nature
i am engulfed in stillness
i encounter a deer as i round a corner
its chestnut eyes intensely sense
something wild within me
transfixed
we meld palpably
whispering our essence
myopic views warp into acute focus
golden flowers stretch and arch
and yawning into the sun
swell with bursts of luster
whilst violets polka dot the path
with lilac luminescence
dead tree trunks
mutating into masterpieces
yearn for new life
drawing in the squirrels
yellow-bellied birds
hover
sensing my motions
whilst woodland winds undulate
pine scented waves of sea salt oceans
my ears enchantingly enhanced
by bristling leaves caressing trees
as scintillating amber butterflies
dance in synch
with the clock tower’s
ancient chiming
a gust of wind
catches a patch of sand
and sends it quivering
fusing high in summer air
then falling soft as feathers
hidden fairies prance about
answering unheard questions
problems dissolve in emerald meadows
without a hint of striving
essays write themselves
upon my mind
poetry flows through me
wings of meadowlarks
trace my face with nuances
interlaced with connotations
rushing home
i write it down
then bowing i take credit
for what was etched upon my soul
by a sunbeam in the forest
©2016janetaylor
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 10:09 PM UTC
Sunrays are slanting through the trees
While the sweet tiny bluebells sway
In sweet summertime's blowing breeze
Sunrays are slanting through the trees
While the sweet tiny bluebells sway
In the warmth of the tender day
Sunrays are slanting through the trees
While the sweet tiny bluebells sway
~Marian~
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 10:02 AM UTC
—and not simply by the fact that this shading of
forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam,
the gloom of cypresses,
is what I wish to prove.
When you and I were first in love we drove
to the borders of Connacht
and entered a wood there.
Look down you said: this was once a famine road.
I looked down at ivy and the scutch grass
rough-cast stone had
disappeared into as you told me
in the second winter of their ordeal, in
1847, when the crop had failed twice,
Relief Committees gave
the starving Irish such roads to build.
Where they died, there the road ended
and ends still and when I take down
the map of this island, it is never so
I can say here is
the masterful, the apt rendering of
the spherical as flat, nor
an ingenious design which persuades a curve
into a plane,
but to tell myself again that
the line which says woodland and cries hunger
and gives out among sweet pine and cypress,
and finds no horizon
will not be there.
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The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
And altered is the fashion of the earth.
The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.
Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn with his apples scattering;
Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.
But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,
Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are
And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.
Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had
The fingers of no heir will ever hold.
When thou descendest once the shades among,
The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.
Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chain
The love of comrades cannot take away.
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She had hung it up from the mantelpiece in her bedroom, so when he entered the room there it was. It was suddenly lovely and he immediately imagined her body flowing into it, flowing from it. Standing close to the dress he brought his fingers to the fabric, touched gently, stroking then, as though it already held her form and substance.
Stepping past thoughts of her that so stirred his body he entered the pattern of the dress. It was a meadow in southern Ontario. July, when already the sun had bleached the profusion of grasses: water chestnut and papyrus sedge. He had stepped from the untidy veranda, past the pond, and down the rough track between the fields unmown, uncut, left fallow. As he entered the breaks of woodland between these swathes of grassland, deciduous leaves, dry and brittle from the summer's heat, were strewn on the path, and between the trees clumps of bramble bushes with berries of red and blue, black and purple.
There was no wind. The only sounds an underlay of crickets, his footfall, and the sharp mournful cries of geese on the now distant pond.
He saw her like an apparition standing motionless at the woodland’s boundary; her dress at one with all that surrounded her. When he came close and placed his hand on her shoulder he could smell the sweet dry earth mingling with her body's sweat, a hint of her *** as he placed his cheek against the shower of printed pollen amongst the leaves on her back.
Back in the late afternoon bedroom he heard her move about in the kitchen, and the spell broken, he turned away and went downstairs.
Several days later, as they prepared for bed, she slipped the dress on. As she stood in the lamplight smoothing it against her flanks, adjusting its fall across her ******* he felt himself faint that such a thing of beauty could be a joy forever . . . and beyond.
Oct 14, 2012
Oct 14, 2012 at 4:55 AM UTC
The sun is shining through the trees
Tiny rain-washed bluebells
Are growing at my feet
Birds are calling to each other
Moss is growing on the ground
And lichen on the trunks of trees
Dappled sunshine lights my path
Ferns are showing off their green lace
And dewdrops are sparkling on the grass
While the sky couldn't be a bluer sapphire hue
A path of cherry blossoms in bloom
Tower overhead
Their sweet fragrance dancing on the breeze
A circle of mushrooms
Is where the Fairies dance each night
That is where I dance too
Today is such a lovely day
Spent in my enchanted Woodland
~Marian~
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 5:26 PM UTC
The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinuviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.
There Beren came from mountains cold,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled
He walked alone and sorrowing.
He peered between the hemlock-leaves
And saw in wonder flowers of gold
Upon her mantle and her sleeves,
And her hair like shadow following.
Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.
Through woven woods in Elvenhome
She lightly fled on dancing feet,
And left him lonely still to roam
In the silent forest listening.
He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Or music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves,
And one by one with sighing sound
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.
He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.
When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water-bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.
Again she fled, but swift he came,
Tinuviel! Tinuviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell,
His voice laid on her: Beren came,
And doom fell on Tinuviel
That in his arms lay glistening.
As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tinuviel the elven-fair
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.
Long was the way that fate them bore
O'er stony mountains cold and grey
Through halls of iron and darkling door
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And log ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.
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Arrays of stars land softly
on this thick bed of pine needles
under your graciously reaching tree,
and we see impossibly blue, miniature
flowers with centers of infinite white.
Tunneling underground, more
have been born over the decades
since you planted their mothers and fathers
by hand, here in this garden that has become
a secret woodland, even in the middle of town.
Mar 30, 2016
Mar 30, 2016 at 7:54 PM UTC
.
Come! Come! One and all,
come to my woodland hall,
attend ye all mid-winters ball,
in friendship harken to my call.
Paths awash with candle light,
in the branches burning bright,
such an enchanting magical sight,
to guide you gentle through the night.
Friends with whom to drink and eat,
cuddled warm in a sylvan heat,
while dancers fling to keep the beat,
songs are sung, lovers meet.
And by a fire in a little glade,
words are spoken, promises made,
the Bonding tree with hearts displayed,
brings memories that will never fade.
.
*And when the party is at an end
I'll lovingly embrace my dearest friend,
and quieter than what lies beneath,
whisper sweet poetry to my Lady Leaf.*
© Pagan Paul (04/10/17)
Oct 4, 2017
Oct 4, 2017 at 10:47 AM UTC
A Galax of blossom
the woodland garden,
Solomons seal and Euphorbia too.
Cinderella
a melt down of lavender blue.
A walkway abode of enchantment.
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 5:43 AM UTC
.. For as flying.
Spying
Places repose.
Dream, suppose.
Dreams loll without respite Shady oak. Bright swirl spring breeze
Of green crisp apple bite. Shelter bespoke. Insects morn, vast seas
As gold burns warmer. Sleep, still abuzz. Clouds as beat wings
Sun shadows corner Seconds love. Million insects sing
Dreaming more light Eyes shut, island. Time goes, seconds fit
Colours mix despite. Twig woodland. Seen today, exquisite
Great light bested. Instant, rested. The rays pestered
Shadows nested Dreams vivid. Up, now rested
Colours
Mull
Jul 22, 2015
Jul 22, 2015 at 5:38 PM UTC
It was a hundred years ago,
When, by the woodland ways,
The traveller saw the wild deer drink,
Or crop the birchen sprays.
Beneath a hill, whose rocky side
O'erbrowed a grassy mead,
And fenced a cottage from the wind,
A deer was wont to feed.
She only came when on the cliffs
The evening moonlight lay,
And no man knew the secret haunts
In which she walked by day.
White were her feet, her forehead showed
A spot of silvery white,
That seemed to glimmer like a star
In autumn's hazy night.
And here, when sang the whippoorwill,
She cropped the sprouting leaves,
And here her rustling steps were heard
On still October eves.
But when the broad midsummer moon
Rose o'er that grassy lawn,
Beside the silver-footed deer
There grazed a spotted fawn.
The cottage dame forbade her son
To aim the rifle here;
"It were a sin," she said, "to harm
Or fright that friendly deer.
"This spot has been my pleasant home
Ten peaceful years and more;
And ever, when the moonlight shines,
She feeds before our door.
"The red men say that here she walked
A thousand moons ago;
They never raise the war-whoop here,
And never twang the bow.
"I love to watch her as she feeds,
And think that all is well
While such a gentle creature haunts
The place in which we dwell."
The youth obeyed, and sought for game
In forests far away,
Where, deep in silence and in moss,
The ancient woodland lay.
But once, in autumn's golden time,
He ranged the wild in vain,
Nor roused the pheasant nor the deer,
And wandered home again.
The crescent moon and crimson eve
Shone with a mingling light;
The deer, upon the grassy mead,
Was feeding full in sight.
He raised the rifle to his eye,
And from the cliffs around
A sudden echo, shrill and sharp,
Gave back its deadly sound.
Away into the neighbouring wood
The startled creature flew,
And crimson drops at morning lay
Amid the glimmering dew.
Next evening shone the waxing moon
As sweetly as before;
The deer upon the grassy mead
Was seen again no more.
But ere that crescent moon was old,
By night the red men came,
And burnt the cottage to the ground,
And slew the youth and dame.
Now woods have overgrown the mead,
And hid the cliffs from sight;
There shrieks the hovering hawk at noon,
And prowls the fox at night.
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Come with me, Fairy Sister
Let us send the pixie dust flying
We have lives to cheer, hearts to heal
And wings to mend
Come with me, Fairy Sister
Dance with me under the Moon
Dance by my side in that Fairy Ring
In which we dance each Night
Come with me, Fairy Sister
And gaze at the stars in the midnight sky
Sit beside me on that mushroom
And fly with me in the sky
Come with me, Fairy Sister
Let us make mortals dreams sweet
Let us help to brighten their days
In hopes that no one will ever be sad
Help me to help them see the brighter side of life
That we Fairies always see
Come with me, Fairy Sister
And dance beside the bubbling creek
Let us waltz in a field of flowers
And fly in the brightest of rays
Come with me, Fairy Sister
Down that woodland path
Where its shady and cool
With little breezes sighing through the pines
Like whispers of secrets dancing
Through the wind
Come with me, Fairy Sister
And with me play that pedal harp
Making a beautiful melody
On those simple strings
Help me ring out a nocturnal symphony
Come with me, Fairy Sister
And we'll be best sisters and friends
Forever
~Marian~
Jul 11, 2013
Jul 11, 2013 at 5:00 PM UTC
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
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Rhythmic tympani of woodland symphony,
His search for lunch in Quercus branch
Ads music to a forest glade.
Dawn's chorus would the poorer be
Without his insistent cacophony
Sep 8, 2010
Sep 8, 2010 at 2:21 AM UTC
I hear a wind whispering from the hills
It comes down tickling the woodland rills
From far is heard the frightened murmur of leaves
As it pounces on them like wayside thieves
It shakes the branches of flowering trees
And their weak petals drop like confetti in the breeze
Over hills and trees it loves to skip and stray
Always in motion, never inclined to stay
It moves unhampered over streams and field
With no resistance to its might, they simply yield
Like a child, it romps over the sloppy meadows
In its gentle touch, dances the gleeful flowers
It skillfully pleats the blue chiffon of the ocean
Sometimes curling waves in electric motion
Over the sea it runs puffing up the sails
And over the sky heaping clouds in bales
Sometimes it steals furtively like a lover
And disappears kissing our cheeks under cover
Often it comes capering with a lilt and a swing
We feel delighted when we hear its merry song
Like a nomad, the wind roams from place to place,
Hiding its mysterious presence from our glance
From an unknown hide out it comes like a spirit
But always making us feel its vigorous might!
At times it gains force and roars like a beast
Felling trees and wreaking havoc with its twist
In rampage, it sweeps the sea and the ground
Triggering sparks of fear and horror all around
Oct 27, 2017
Oct 27, 2017 at 9:43 AM UTC
**via woodland trail, along deciduous dale
amid a rocky terrain, through geographic chicane
meandrous no longer, smoky waters beleaguered
upwelling they burble, in deep tracts they gurgle
hypnotic they swirl, then turgidly whorl
the rivers egress, from caverns sub-aqueous
bereft of surrender, outpours now in splendour
the Wharfe expelled from the strid.
... ... ...**
Jun 20, 2012
Jun 20, 2012 at 12:26 PM UTC
In a dreamy woodland
There's a cottage just for me
And it's waiting there now
Beside a peaceful stream
Where quiet maples grow
And deer are not afraid
Where mushrooms grow in sweet silence
And sunlight glistens amongst the leaves
There's an enchanted cottage
Hidden in those shady woods
Where running cedar
And lady ferns intertwine
Where tears never fall
From any eye
That is where my secret abode
Is found in shadowy canopy
Of sun-dappled trees
Where dewdrops passionately kiss
The demure bluebells
Where breezes whisper
Through tall, swaying pines
And rustle ancient autumn leaves
From many seasons ago
Where time stands still
And woodland fairies dance
Where willow harps are played
Echoing in dreamy breezes
Through the trees and dancing through the air
Waltzing with the butterflies
Touching the lemon citrus sun
With fingers of gold
And spring days bygone
That's where you'll find me
Dreaming riparian
Scent of petrichor
Healing my soul
In summer woodland yonder
~Marian~
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 12:54 AM UTC
Walking through woodland,
Sunlight dancing through branches,
I find myself beside a stream,
My mind wandering, wondering,
Exploring love on the edge of time.
My thoughts tumble over rocks,
Caught in water’s swirl and eddy,
A leaf that's fallen free, floating by,
Carried by flowing water, turning,
Searching out my broken dream.
I've walked this path for years,
Hearing the wind calling my name,
Rustling in the sad weeping trees,
Tears mingle with the stream, a leaf,
Part of me, writhes in a broken dream.
© Paul Chafer 2014
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 7:34 AM UTC