Showing posts with label woods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label woods. Show all posts

Monday, October 24, 2016

Here, In the Bloom of Dying...


Here, in woodland cathedral
Here, in a hall of leaves
Flowers are falling, autumnal
Petal from rainbow eaves
Here, in the bloom of dying
Wind-song and quiet vying
From lofty loom soft-sighing
Nature, its glory grieves

Here, in the halo of wooing
Here, in the harrowed fields
We witness Time undoing
What nothing mortal shields
Here, like the corpse of laughter
From tow’ring coppice-rafter
Into the ever-after
Nature its glory yields

Here, in a world of wonder
Here, in a swirl red-gold
Spirals spring’s full-grown plunder
Into earth’s umber hold
Here, in a spree of splendors
Nature its tree surrenders
While its Caretaker renders
Nature its glory folds

© Janet Martin

Victoria and I had a lemon-tea party in the neighbour's bush yesterday...
(it was going to be a sit-and-sip, but turned out to be a tromp-and-a-h-h/awe!!,
because we both felt there was so much to see in so little time







Saturday, December 12, 2015

The Wood Is Such a Lovely Place...




The wood is such a lovely place
Apart from Time’s progressive race
With green of moss and limbs that toss
Their loss of life like layered lace


The wood is such a lovely deep
A temple beneath blue-sky keep
Nature depletes and then repeats
Its circuit of bud, bloom and sleep


The wood is like a garden plot
Of bracken and forget-me-not
With log to sit and rest a bit
To talk to God with naught but thought


The wood is happy like a child
A home to creatures of the wild
A wind-song, leaf-song, bird-song berth
Its timberland heaven on earth


The wood is such a lovely peace
Cedar of scent and pine-bough heath
Where we should pause often because
It reminds us to stop and breathe

© Janet Martin

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Walk in the Winter-woods





Maybe it’s the hush as it traces dappled spaces
Dripping from lofty and bare-naked limb
Or the meekness of nonchalant hemlock fingers
Strumming the hour in a reverent hymn

Maybe it’s the absence of mortal creation
In this sanctuary, not made with hands
Where winnowing winds murmur kind, tender mercies
Softening duty’s despotic demands

The nuthatch flits from its tree-hole safe-haven
The language of leaf-song has slipped to the earth
Yet the breeze slides through the turrets of summer
Teasing the silence with evergreen mirth

Maybe it’s the absence of primal persuasion
Here, in the off-spring of Eden’s paradise
There is no clamoring intimidation
Where century-shaped pillars reach to the skies

What is it about a walk in the woodlands?
This beautiful garden bereft of cruel strife
Where shoulders, care-weighted upon our arrival
Are no longer bent beneath burdens of life

Time charts its discourse of four-season struggle
The woods are a glorious four-season reprieve
And perhaps we all would remain carefree children
If we wandered through the woodlands every eve

© Janet Martin