trees

Turning

At the turning into Autumn

I miss you

the soft thud of my feet

my heart

on pine-needle gravel paths

through forest

criss-cross sideways

up the mountain

swagged like

tinsel on a tennenbaum

a quiet deer sometimes

standing there

watching my ungraceful gait

from its lovely stillness

cool water in a hollowed log

meant actually

a whole system of pipes

beneath the ground of this

not-so-wild place

but I suspend disbelief

bursting out and around

body-singing glory

of movement

it doesn’t matter

if my knees knock and

I don’t look like

an advertisement for Asics

moving like

a lover above and below

worship and own, be owned

mine, surrendered

the exchange of breath and air

only distance

memory

pulls and aches

but cannot break

 

Photo by Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps on Unsplash

mineral green

what can I tell you

about

swift-moving morning-mineral water

cold and clean

when the world pauses

insects scream

the trees watch

ancient and serene

above a sandy bottle-green

river bed

so pure

dimpled surface like

a music-box cylinder

our arms the combs

in tune

her hair in curls

at her neck

my feet kick

like a child’s

below

in the depths

so clear it looks near

tearing the blue

of our kids’ licked-lenses

off our eyes

so

the ungoggled

colours slant sepia

in a heartbeat

like blood, like 80s photographs

the tint

of old leaves

oh

how can I explain

the magic of that

scene

 

Photo by Irene Aguilera Blanco on Unsplash

Felled

 

Someone ripped out all the trees

between my house and next door

and

although we never did gardening together

or talked horticulture

it must be for you

because

the uprooted mess

of destroyed earth and leaves

is like how my heart feels

it makes no sense

why

won’t we ever talk again?

or laugh about

unsolicited plant-vandalism

there was so much more

I wanted to say

I need your input

on this thing

and what about a new tattoo

of a dead tree with roots akimbo

just won’t be the same

it’s all broken

there’s a hole

in my ground

without you

 

Photo: Claire Doble

 

Kintsugi

 

hold the wind in my arms

ghost trees toss

their shrouds of

pale cloth

while wave-feathers trail

white-peacock fringes

behind surges

irreparable

over rocks

as my tin-can heart

soaks up

songs from

half-forgotten harmonicas

I’m poised

a broken-bevel jewel

seeking kintsugi

to gild old scars

 

 

kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with strands of gold lacquer

Photo:  Claire Doble

Neural pathways

As I slope up that bone-colour concrete path

sticks and gumleaves and sand

the scent of the bush – lemon eucalpypt and banksia

alone for the first time in days

home but not home

that smell in my eyes maybe because they fill with tears

or I’m thinking of him trapped inside delerium

grey-green and olive green and agapanthus green and black-burnt trunks with

small explosions of scarlet tongues and creamed-butter ragged tulle blossoms

following paths I’ve never run before

the warm air holds me safe and not too hot

thinking of how I heard he quietly saved his son once from a precipice

the way you do with family, unhesitating, sure as a heatbeat

those old trees stand tall, smooth barked and guarding

not over me, their roots luxuriate in more ancient soil

can you ever reconcile

a life, a mind, a body, a soul

or illness

or just keep jogging on

 

Day 4 prompt was: to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like “beauty” or “justice,” but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns. I found the example poem by Amy Tudor in this piece so moving I guess I tried to mimic the style, I think it worked well to focus on trees and flowers etc.  

I might not be able to link to the prompts each day as I´m mostly working via smartphone at the moment so cutting and pasting and link making is a bit of a faff… but you can always check in to http://www.napowrimo.net