STICKS AND STONES

We sowed a bed

Of purple heather
In overcast
Acrylic weather,
It prospers still.
And calls the fumbling
Bumble bees
Who sip the nectar
On their knees
And sac-fuls fill.
 
We planted oaks
A seedling pair
From forest bed
The lawn was bare
Before they grew.
Mine is giddy
Hers is shy
Six feet apart
Under a sky
Of lapis blue.
 
We made a shed
Of sticks and stones
And filled it with
The withered bones
Of old beech sap.
And sods of turf
From Ring Dong bog
A spade and fork
And bed for dog
We call him Jap.
 
There is no shadow
Without light
Where be the day
Without the night?
A twilight den.
We spend some time
Long leagues apart
Yet still return
To the start
And smile again.

FALLING LEAVES

I watched them, half not looking

As if their falling was the start of end.
In ones and twos they glided down
And settled on their mothers bosom
In the bend.
 
Beech they were and oak, some ash
Brothers and sisters of yellow and gold
Wrinkled and spent and going home
Barely born, never knowing the human fear
Of growing old.
 
I watched them in their ones and twos
And multitudes of carpet leaf,
I thought of her in distant climes
Her human thoughts of love and loss
And sometimes grief.
 
They made my simple heart sad
Even though their choir was singing
With one, yet thousand voices
Of re-birth and root and all-renewing
The gift of bringing.
 
Memory is the curse of man
That carries the message of always parting,
Nature knows no mercy or sorrow
Or what to store up for tomorrow
No stopping; only starting.

 

(A TRIBUTE TO NAT KING COLE AND HIS WONDERFUL RENDITION OF ‘AUTUMN LEAVES’.)