and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It’s like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
Mary Oliver
The Trees’ Counselling
I was strolling sorrowfully
Thro’ the corn fields and the meadows;
The stream sounded melancholy,
And I walked among the shadows;
While the ancient forest trees
Talked together in the breeze;
In the breeze that waved and blew them,
With a strange weird rustle thro’ them.
Said the oak unto the others
In a leafy voice and pleasant:
‘Here we all are equal brothers,
‘Here we have nor lord nor peasant
‘Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring,
‘Pass in happy following.
‘Little winds may whistle by us,
‘Little birds may overfly us;
‘But the sun still waits in heaven
‘To look down on us in splendour;
‘When he goes the moon is given,
‘Full of rays that he doth lend her:
‘And tho’ sometimes in the night
‘Mists may hide her from our sight,
‘She comes out in the calm weather,
‘With the glorious stars together.’
From the fruitage, from the blossom,
From the trees came no denying;
Then my heart said in my bosom:
‘Wherefore art thou sad and sighing?
‘Learn contentment from this wood
‘That proclaimeth all states good;
‘Go not from it as it found thee;
‘Turn thyself and gaze around thee.’
And I turned: behold the shading
But showed forth the light more clearly;
The wild bees were honey-lading;
The stream sounded hushing merely,
And the wind not murmuring
Seemed, but gently whispering:
‘Get thee patience; and thy spirit
‘Shall discern in all things merit.’
Christina Rossetti
The Unseen Life of Trees
(For Esther and Jess)
When the fraying skeins of silver birch
sway in the wind they think of
lulling water in the floating harbour,
the dried out plants on a deck,
the bespoke barge door cut to close
on a trapezium.
A sparse beech globe of yellow
holds an afternoon with two young friends,
who will walk through their vivid lives
beyond the end of mine.
A ball of mistletoe hangs
way up in spindle branches balancing
a trowel, a ginger cake,
and a framed copy of Jessop’s 1802
‘Design for Improving the Harbour of Bristol’.
Umber banks of oak climb the hillside
dragging children by the hand.
‘There will be time,’ they whisper,
canopy to canopy.
‘There will be time, before
all our leaves stretch out across the frosted ground.’
Chrissie Gittins
Green Rain
Into the scented woods we’ll go,
And see the blackthorn swim in snow.
High above, in the budding leaves,
A brooding dove awakes and grieves;
The glades with mingled music stir,
And wildly laughs the woodpecker.
When blackthorn petals pearl the breeze,
There are the twisted hawthorn trees
Thick-set with buds, as clear and pale
As golden water or green hail –
As if a storm of rain had stood
Enchanted in the thorny wood,
And, hearing fairy voices call,
Hung poised, forgetting how to fall.
Mary Webb
from Aurora Leigh
But then the thrushes sang,
I flattered all the beauteous country round,
As poets use; the skies, the clouds, the fields,
The happy violets hiding from the roads
The primroses run down to, carrying gold, –
The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out
Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths
’Twixt dripping ash-boughs, – hedgerows all alive
With birds and gnats and large white butterflies
Which look as if the May-flower had caught life
And palpitated forth upon the wind, –
Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist,
Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills,
And cattle grazing in the watered vales,
And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods,
And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere,
Confused with smell of orchards.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
For Forest
Forest could keep secrets
Forest could keep secrets
Forest tune in every day
to watersound and birdsound
Forest letting her hair down
to the teeming creeping of her forest-ground
But Forest don’t broadcast her business
no Forest cover her business down
from sky and fast-eye sun
and when night come
and darkness wrap her like a gown
Forest is a bad dream woman
Forest dreaming about mountain
and when earth was young
Forest dreaming of the caress of gold
Forest roosting with mysterious eldorado
and when howler monkey
wake her up with howl
Forest just stretch and stir
to a new day of sound
but coming back to secrets
Forest could keep secrets
Forest could keep secrets
And we must keep Forest
Grace Nichols
Sylhet
There,
Sun birds chipper,
Their feathers, light lime,
Seep in the sunshine.
Crisp leaves grow,
Wild and olive,
And the silent streams
Run,
Fresh water,
To guide the Elish,
Silver, simple fish,
Away to the sea.
Mango trees
Summit and soar,
Stalk high above
The forest floor.
Where
A Bengal tiger,
Obsolete
As an emperor
Trembles
As the hushed wind –
Breathes –
Rukiya Khatun
How to knit a sheep
Start with the legs. It helps to
grab a hoof before casting on, or
he might kick you off. Hold the yarn
taut enough to test his strength,
loose enough to feel his flank quiver
as he bunches shanks to stretch the
ply, hoping it will fray. Loop and dip,
add sufficient stitches to keep his
interest, praise his beauty while
you unravel him, tug gently or he’ll
slip your noose. Twist and roll, turn
and back again, keep your palm
against his side as you slide the pins
around about, each click a kiss,
each gartered purl a sweet low
riff to make him give it all, slough
that fleece in one soft piece
to flow from fingertips to floor.
Scoop it up and sniff warm oil
rising through his staple, the crop
he gives up now with grace. Keep
your face pressed to his curls,
breathe the heat and wax of him
behind his ears as hands move
faster as you near the end, his chest
bare and cold, your feet hot under
so much weight. Tie the ends off tight
before you let him go, your nose to his
in thanks only eskimos understand.
Di Slaney
Nerval and the Lobster
His beautiful clatter turns heads.
I explain: he does not bark.
He knows the secrets of the sea.
He is docile at my heel
and slender as a mayfly.
He moves like a long blue bone.
I ask: what are you thinking,
elegant prince? Whisper what you remember.
What are you thinking, my brother?
The Palais-Royal is filling with ocean.
Salt frosts the golden halls.
Is this your work, O beautiful monster?
Katharine Towers
Nan Hardwicke Turns Into a Hare
(In memory of M)
I will tell you how it was. I slipped
into the hare like a nude foot
into a glorious slipper. Pushing her bones
to one side to make room for my shape
so I could settle myself like a child within her.
In the dark I groped for her freedom, gently teasing
it apart across my fingers to web across my palm.
Here is where our seperation ends:
I tensed her legs with my arms, pushed my rhythm
down the stepping-stones of spine. An odd feeling this,
to hold another’s soul in the mouth like an egg;
the aching jaw around her delicate self. Her mind
was simple, full of open space and weather.
I warmed myself on her frantic pulse and felt the draw
of gorse and grass, the distant slate line
at the edge of the moor. The air span diamonds
out of sea fret to catch across my tawny coat
as I began to fold the earth beneath my feet
and fly across the heath, the heather.
Wendy Pratt
Of Many Worlds in This World
Just like as in a nest of boxes round,
Degrees of sizes in each box are found:
So, in this world, may many others be
Thinner and less, and less still by degree:
Although they are not subject to our sense,
A world may be no bigger than two-pence.
Nature is curious, and such works may shape,
Which our dull senses easily escape:
For creatures, small as atoms, may be there,
If every one a creature’s figure bear.
If atoms four, a world can make, then see
What several worlds might in an ear-ring be:
For, millions of those atoms may be in
The head of one small, little, single pin.
And if thus small, then ladies may well wear
A world of worlds, as pendants in each ear.
Margaret Cavendish
Power of the Other
This mind crawls like a pregnant cat; like traffic.
I am in love with the scientists.
They use simple sentence structures. Subject, verb, object.
The sun is a star. Fear is an instinct. The heart is an organ.
Each word is a molecule, the link in a chain, a single step along a
winding mountain path – at the end you look back and see a brave
new word, a glimmering landscape smiling shyly beneath you.
The scientists are neither charmed nor terrorized.
The scientists are radiant with patience.
They walk calmly, through the woods, through the trees.
Francesca Beard
Friday Afternoon
It was the autumn’s last day, when the roof
was skimmed by wings – Red Admiral butterfly? –
a glance of black against the sky, like truth.
It was the day on which the goldfinch flung
its yellow wing against the glass, as though
it had drunk all the sweetness from the sun,
by which, in the wild garden, hips were seen
swelled by last night’s rain, crowns under leaves,
as though they could stay glossy, ever green,
a day when children played and did not fall
when traffic stilled to world’s edge, a gold crawl,
which I heard, sun-lapped, sleeping through it all.
Alison Brackenbury
Speak of the North!
Speak of the North! A lonely moor
Silent and dark and trackless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.
Profoundly still the twilight air,
Lifeless the landscape; so we deem,
Till like a phantom gliding near
A stag bends down to drink the stream.
And far away a mountain zone,
A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,
And one star, large and soft and lone,
Silently lights the unclouded skies.
Charlotte Brontë
A Memory
I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town . . .
The shining town . . .
And the tender fumbling of the surf
On the sulphur-yellow beaches
As we sat . . . a little apart . . . in the close-pressing night.
The moon hung above us like a golden mango,
And the moist air clung to our faces,
Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child
And we watched the out-flung sea
Rolling to the purple edge of the world,
Yet ever back upon itself . . .
As we . . .
Inadequate night . . .
And mooned white memory
Of a tropic sea . . .
How softly it comes up
Like an ungathered lily.
Lola Ridge
Wind and Silver
Greatly shining,
The Autumn moon floats in the thin sky;
And the fish-ponds shake their backs and flash their dragon scales
As she passes over them.
Amy Lowell
from The Land
Now in the radiant night no men are stirring:
The little houses sleep with shuttered panes;
Only the hares are wakeful, loosely loping
Along the hedges with their easy gait,
And big loose ears, and pad-prints crossing snow;
The ricks and trees stand silent in the moon,
Loaded with snow, and tiny drifts from branches
Slip to the ground in woods with sliding sigh.
Private the woods, enjoying a secret beauty.
Vita Sackville-West
Twinkled to Sleep
Cerulean night-sky
Star-set;
Stygian-dark river-plain
East, north, west,
Dance-set;
Myriad amber-flashing
Lights dancing, rays flashing, all night.
Delight! delight! Inexpressible heart-dance
With these.
Strange heart-peace, in sparkling lights!
Blithe heart-ease, starry peace, dancing repose!
Star-charmed, dance-enchanted eyes close,
Appeased.
Dance in jet-dark depth, in star-set height,
Lights dancin
g, west, east,
Star-high, heart-deep,
All night.
Ursula Bethell
‘I’m glad I exist’ – Freedom, Mindfulness and Joy
Reading poetry is a wonderful way to practise mindfulness in a frenetic world. Even the busiest day has space for a poem-sized tea-break or bedtime moment, when we can put aside all distractions and wallow in a few silent minutes of contemplation. Here, poets including Emily Dickinson celebrate the joy of reading and the power it has to sweep us far from humdrum and hectic days. These poets can teach us new ways of looking – as H.D. writes, ‘perceiving the other-side of everything’ – at the world around us, at happiness and grief, and at ourselves. Their words remind us of the vast and often unexplored territory within us, the solar systems and seascapes of our own imaginations.
One of poetry’s greatest pleasures is the discovery that someone, somewhere, at some time, has experienced the same feelings and wrestled with the same anxieties as we have. These poems look within: at tranquillity, or jubilation, or valour. From Winifred Holtby, letting her troubles sink beneath unruffled waters, to Wendy Cope delighted by life’s simple enchantments, here are words to savour and shout when life is easy and to hold on to when it isn’t.
It Is Everywhere
Green leaves. Wind kissed.
Closed palms. Fresh hope.
Deep river. Free flow.
No signs. Open road.
Wide sky. Grow wings.
Feel light. Dream big.
No frame. New eyes.
From dark. Find light.
Hug air. Laugh loud.
Breathe deep. Dance wild.
Smile wide. Shut eyes.
Hold chest. Close mind.
Ask cloud. Ask wind.
Ask earth. Ask field.
How to live free?
Hold on. Let Go.
Give trust. Lend heart.
Fall down. Get up.
Eat fear. Drink hope.
Remi Graves
On Foot I Wandered Through the Solar Systems