[wrc_column grid=”3″ width=”2″ type=”start”]Ledbury Poetry Festival is partnering with Queenswood Country Park to launch our “Poetry of the Woods” on-line poetry submission. We are calling for your poems on your experiences with woods and trees – perhaps trees have healing qualities for you? Perhaps you like to smell the silence and hear trees whisper? Perhaps you are inspired by the multiple life forms that inhabit trees and woods? If you’re indoors in isolation or lockdown, is there a tree you can see or remember?

Upload your poem here using the form below (40 lines maximum). One poem per person, please. Your poem will be enjoyed by our on line community, and submissions will be convened for a special Festival reading event. Mandy Ross, our tree whispering Poet of the Woods, has started the campaign with her poem for two voices (read the italics as chorus) “What We Know”

About Mandy Ross, Ledbury Poetry Festival’s Poet of the Woods

Mandy takes an unconventional approach to poetry, using it as a spark to engage and weave voices and stories in all sorts of communities. She makes visual text work too, often seeking inspiration outdoors in the city and beyond. Training as a psychotherapeutic counsellor, she explores creative approaches to wellbeing and personal growth.

Mandy has written lots of children’s books as well as plays and work for adults. As one half of Secret City Arts, she works with storytellers, musicians, photographers and filmmakers to bring words off the page.

www.mandyross.co.uk, www.secretcityarts.com

Poetry of The Woods entry form 

[Form id=”26″] [/wrc_column][wrc_column grid=”3″ width=”1″ type=”end”] [/wrc_column]

---

Returning by Jodie Duffy

When this all began
you stood in silhouette
arms reaching up for
something you could not grasp
fingers jabbing the shadows
you cursed the sky
you’d waited so long to see

it was a few days later
when I noticed the buds
green breaking through
your wrinkled, cynical skin
and the clouds softened

a week or so after
your lower branches were dressed
ready to welcome
the imperfect spring
warmed, you shrugged off
the fatigue, the chill
from your creaking limbs

then, today you nodded
towards the house
I sat next to you
the shade of your leaves
rippled across the grass –
the return of your laughter

---

Housman in Autumn by Alison Falls

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with fire along the bough
While crimson, orange, gold and green
Together through the woods are seen.

Now of my threescore years and ten
Not one day will come again.
Nor is it given me to know
How many days I’ve yet to go.

But since to look at woods alight
Time is no measure of delight,
A moment’s all that I desire
To see the cherry hung with fire.

---

Nature Club, 1998 – 2002, by Heddwen Bethan Creaney

I never learnt the leaves
inked on worksheets
cut from brothers

I never learnt to remember
to hear his name
when I looked up
head tipped so far I can’t breathe in

I never learnt what they told me
twisting the leaf’s stem between
thumb and index
feeling the dry bark,
waxy crayon on crisp crunching paper

All I remember is
the dust of the Forest
on my finger tips
sticking to the sap
sticking to me

I forgot again
to listen,

it might have been an oak?

---

Euphoric Groves by Avisha Mathur

I miss the blissful bond that we had
All the times where i felt down
It lifted me up in the air
I failed to remember any despair
A wave beneath me that wouldn’t let me drown

It confessed to me its pain
And how it helped man but man helped annihilate,
Exterminate the woods, now he’s in vain
He’s insane!

All they try to is to co exist
Provide with the elixir of life
Bring life into the bodies of mankind
Subdue, suppress, insufflate the toxicity in our minds.

When I abscond in wanderlust
Take off in hopes of efficacious meditation
I will for eternity circle back to
Euphoric groves for rejuvenation

Obliterate the unwanted
Revamp,renew the zephyr
Give an adobe to the tiny and immense
Lord, shield these Euphoric Groves forever!

---

Tree by David Smith

Just before you go

let me tell you about the tree

on the south side of the hill

which beckons me to lie

in its sloe-blue rumors

Today we spoke for the first time

I asked and it was agreed

that I could bring my special friend

So

will you please.

---

The Bluebell Wood by Sue Johnson

Walk in afternoon light, your hand in mine,
through an orchard in blossom.
Open the gate that leads to the woodland.
Notice birdsong and primroses,
violets and wood anemones.

Follow the path until you reach the place
where silver birches rise from an inland sea
vibrant with colour and scent
pulsating with loving memories.
Pause here. Listen to your heart.

Connect with the magic of this place.
Make a wish at the special tree.
Give thanks for everything we have now
as we create our own tomorrows
among the tide of bluebells.

---

The Wishing Tree by Judy Dinnen
Blue for hope, red for prayer, yellow for fury
They blew in the wind by the village path,
strips of Inge’s dress, Tomas’ jacket ,
Irma’s bedspread, striped and worn,

Green for resignation,
flowers for remembering.

When hunger or need came
Maria cut strips of fabric,
rag ribbons, hope bands,
went to the wishing tree,
standing alone in the wind,
cold biting her cheeks.

Checks for tomorrow,
corduroy for sunrise.

Fingers stiff as frozen cod,
she tied her found ribbons
on a crazy branch,
round and over and under,
so the blast wouldn’t steal them.

Blue for hope,
patterns for apricots.

Slowly, prayerfully, she let go,
dropped her calloused hands
against her flowered smock.
They blew with the whispers of her heart,
waving hope in the bitter cold,
wishing for gold, for journeys,
for peace, for release
or even, maybe, for romance.

Red for prayers, stripes for dreams,
blue, green, emerald, puce, amber
for adventure and a new moon

---

Terroir
(Grandmont, Languedoc)

by Roger West

Limpid sun in a late December sky. Sounds of rifle shots rippling, of baying hounds rebounding. We foraged for pine cones, truffling them out as they snouted and snuffled in the bracken.

He stepped from the trees, almost perfectly camouflaged, weathered skin against weathered bark. On point duty it seemed for the hunters tracking their prey further down the valley. He led us through undergrowth down the path known only, he said, to him to show us the dolmen and withdrew to a respectful, custodial distance while we examined scarified and striated stones, sacrificial ashes long absorbed into soil. We saw him cock an ear, tilt his head, as though sniffing a new scent. ‘Voiture’ he said, hearing it before we did, ‘elle monte’, and took off towards the car park to flush out fresh quarry, returning with a new brace of visitors, harried and run to earth.

Later at home we burned the pine cones in the hearth, their heady resinous pyre spiralling upwards. Sacrificial ashes to sacrificial ashes.

---

The Lilac and the Cherry Tree by Mark Mansfield

There is a garden, choked with weeds,
where a lilac and a cherry tree
beside each other bloom,
where birds and squirrels play and feed
around a forgotten tomb.

The lilac’s branches reach like wings,
blossoming its lush perfume.
The cherry tree soon follows suit,
budding white flowers and some springs,
tart globes of unpicked fruit.

Long ago, two lovers drowned
near where these two trees grow,
around which squirrels and birds and more
forage on the untended ground—
a few long after the trees repose
when the tomb is buried in snow.

---

Willow by Karen Glen

the weeping willow waved softly in the wind
shedding teardrops of leaves into the river at its feet
the river grabbed the tears and caressed them
before they were caught by the current
and swept spiralling downstream
before the tears dissipated in to the arms of the willow
resting with abating breeze as it began
to join the tears in the river

---

Wodewove* by Bob Woodroofe

quiet across the woodland glade
comes the woodman with his blade
soon to ring through tree and wood
bleed away the sap like blood
like my crop I grow straight and true
my strength of character runs right through
I too am just as green as they
with leaves about my faces
I love to work and lie and dream
in amongst their shady places
there I sing my own sweet song
and whistle tunes upon the air
they hear me safe within their homes
and from deep inside their lair
they never see me yet they know
who I am and what I stand for
I come from the deepest wildwood
still uphold its ancient law
my mother wouldn’t know me
because I am not of her alone
I belong in hedge and wood
rise through earth and stone
shrouded in green monk’s habit
guardian spirits hasten to the task
shadows behind the trunk
hidden by the mask
come let us play the game
you know well who I am
pray tell me what’s my name
forever upon the woodland scene
I am the one that they call green

* Wodewove – the dark man of the woods

---

Search by Iuliana Pasca

Do not search for me on Facebook,
I’m going where the stones have souls.

Every spring
you shall find emotions
in the water that awakens;
listen to its story, it has read stones
written by the truth seekers.

When you’ll miss me,
look at the calmness of the trees
and the twining of the branches;
search in the springs,
in forests and in the rain,
they will whisper about loneliness
and life’s purpose.

You shall find me
in texts written in blood,
in clouds,
shadows
and wilderness.
Watch and listen for a while
then move on,
to comprehend you won’t be able

until
the written blood will flow through your veins,
the shadows will return to the clouds
and the wilderness of the soul will be filled
with the sand of the desire to know me.

---

Death of a Bluebell Wood by Vickie Johnstone

The earth is screaming silently,
Jaws ripped wide open
To reveal a gaping hole.

Where once breathed wood giants
And a carpet of living purple
Where people walked since 1600
Is now a stripped battleground
Of stumps, rocks and waste.

Bees, butterflies and hoverflies
Float on the breeze with nothing
To pollinate in this naked space.

Where once a canopy of leaves
Shielded us from heavy rain
Like open umbrella arms,
There is an empty vacuum,
The moist brown upturned.

These ancient bluebell woodlands
Have been carved out, centuries
Of existence bitterly erased.

I look over this wretched land
And despair to think who did this.
A legacy of one man’s greed?
Uprooted, we search for truth
Amongst red tape and excuses.

The dormice and squirrels,
Birds, bats and insects have fled,
Wounded or rendered homeless.
Others died in the felling.

Where will the birds be nesting
Next year? They won’t return.
Where will we walk our children?

The trees have taken their own truth,
Their ancient circles of wisdom,
To the grave while nature weeps.

There is a gaping hole here
In the landscape. The heart
Of this Devon valley is breaking
And nothing will fill it.

---

Breathing by Tamsin Pearce

Dappled sunlight
Evening rays
Poplar shadows
Rippling waves

Flickering petals
Crisscross hatch
Metallic silver
Moss bark tracks

Weaving pathways
Raised root knots
Pheasant footprints
Forget me nots

Calming woodland
Clear cool breeze
Peaceful ambience
Springtime breathes

---

Forest of Dean by Peter Johnson

The ghosts of this Royal forest,
Hide in these trees,
On twisted branches,
In hollowed out trunks,
Poachers and miners,
Yesterday’s men,
Poets and artists,
Flourish and fall,
Ink stains of mystics,
Fade in fast running brooks,
Cloaked by the morning mist.
The veins of wintered trees,
Cling on to remnants of golden brown tear drops,
Falling across miles of forest tracks,
Pockmarked by ditches and industry scars,
Bookmarked by sculptures ,
And stained glass forests.
We are waiting for the waking of spring,
And as time trips by the forest fills,
With walkers and runners and cyclists,
Families and dogs,
To breathe in this magical air,
With the backing of bird song,
And water flowing through underground stream,
The clap of wood pigeon wing,
And the call from a lone crow,
While the boar and the deer stay distant,
Til we pack up and go home,
And the stars come alive,
On this Forest of Dean

---

Tree talk by Alison Brackenbury

We hear two kinds of trees. One cannot stay,
like wayward ashes of the railway,
which uproot sheds, are felled, judiciously.
But how their sleek leaves pour! They are the sea.
Beeches remain. Wind-rushed, their rich ranks roar.
Head down, in hill-top tunnels from his door,
a bitter man, who strains to bend like these,
would be at one. Beeches are angry trees.

Massed pines, Victorians’ darlings, whisper stories.
I do not share their narratives of glories.
Yet mouse-squeaks silver them, small goldcrest words.
The tender cords of great trees’ throats are birds.
Step in a storm-struck shell, the hollow yew,
its rose fruits dewed when Saxon gold burned new.
Upon its smoked red bark, rain’s volleys come,
black sprays throb water. You vibrate, time’s drum.

But fear the woods’ late stillness in July,
when sudden dusk has drowned each finch or fly.
No leaves love us. Go now! Or, glancing round,
you hear your future, with no trees, no sound

---

Dream by Mori Leadbetter, age 9

Trees, trees,
Blow in the breeze,
Glint in the sun,
Making life fun.
Though it seems
That every tree dreams,
They awaken us with their brisk breeze.

---

Wild Garlic – in woods by Noeleen Fasolilli

Who would have thought on such a find?
Of carpet white and sceptre crowned,
Filtered light through praiseful hands,
And mighty boughs protecting lands,

And there you were white blossom aired,
Above bowing gowns in regal stare,
A fragrance strong nostalgic there,
And simmered warmth and comfort care,

Why hidden in a valleyed ear?
Where none might see fragrance revered,
That I should find amazed to be,
And join the homage owed to thee,

A two-hold motive in his hands,
Beauty, warmth on this our land

---

Leaf Mould by Chris Hanvey

My fork lances easily through layered mould,
smelling of mushrooms and damp.
Piercing the silver torn leaves
Like invoices on an accountant’s spike.

Soggy, as if well-thumbed newspaper,
falling open to the prong’s probing.
Or half-burnt books,
writhing in flames
And piled high on rioters’bonfires.

I think of the oak, hornbeam and willow.
Their leaves gently falling.
And if not heard making no noise?
And truffles under oak trees,
snouted out by wooly pigs.

And far deeper underground, the press of forests,
Dug out to burn brightly in domestic hearths.
Jagged, glistening black rock that glazes the hands
as hard as leaf mould is soft and crumbling

---

The Leaf Warbler by Phil Madden

At first solely sound.Unseen in deep green.
Maybe a day to settle for whimsy.
Pretending the tree has learnt all the songs.
But then flit and then perch.
Blood shadow of silhouette.
And then new flit and perch. Full frontal now.
Sun struck, it sings.
Arpeggio orgasm of quivering trill.
Whole body shudder. Whole body thrill.

---

Heartwood by Kathy Miles

These pages: long unopened, a flimsy crackle
of leaves that tense against the spine,
ochred from the shop’s forgotten shelves.
A sinter of melded forests, how fragile
it is, how brittle. I should know better,
and yet unfold the book against its will.
And the perfect binding breaks,
snapped back like a sprung lock.
Poems lose their bearings, go racing
round the room like scattered birds.

There is no map for trees. But held
in the memory, perhaps a twist of bough
that marks the lane where you
turn again to your own place.
Held in the threnody of wind,
in the starlings’ hefted code.
Each twig and latticed branch
tuned to the rook’s sharp compass,
the geodesy of a blackbird’s eye.

So hold them while you can.
Feel that woody hug, smell sugary sap,
let their cells mutate your flesh
into leaves and bitter acorns.
Enter the trunk. Count whorls and rings,
peel back the door of bark. Step inside.
And see how a black hole opens up,
sucks you into the heartwood,
down past taproot and bedrock
to the iron-nickel core, where landscapes
are forming in an artery of fire,
and a kenning is forged
from the glowing trope of furnace.

---

Leaking Drips of Learning by Stephen Wren

It was always in the wood’s company
Birches and elders were book ends, Hazels
the arms of my favourite bench

Earthy, earthly existences subdued
by heavenly beams of amaranth. Rose-red,
feral and not forgetting

But, primed always
Showers of not knowing
In absentia
Thoughts about the why
passed between each tree like bullets

Terracotta and grey and less banal
Twins with me in the Square – with placenta
leaking drips of learning
Quick, quick

---

All About Trees By Sumi Leadbetter age 7

Trees are blowing all around,
Trees are moving with every sound,
Birds are having babies,
Squirrels are having them too,
Trees are homes for animals and bugs,
From the mighty Oak to the evergreen Yew.

---

How to Grow an Apple Tree by Esme Blue age 7

the pip from the pith
of an apple
is early food for it to germinate
and shoot upwards
slowly slowly
with its root shooting downwards
slowly slowly

stem likes good
warm moist earth
for growing well
into light
for growing blossom
that blossoms
into blossomy, juicy
apples
delicious

caring I watch carefully …

---

In Elkin Wood by Dave Holmes

In Elkin wood
Beneath the trees
We picnic’ed
And exposed our knees
Bright sunshine
A gentle breeze
Sent a quiver
Atop the trees
the butterflies
madly waltzed
as we amazedly
watched
two jays
defending
territory
did I just say tory
Bagels with cheese
Boiled eggs and ham
Pork pie
A diet?
Who gives a damn
Boris lets us out
Today
An extra spike
Indoors we’ll stay
Senior persons
Stay where you are
The hospitals can’t
Deal with your care
We’ve had a good day out
Home again
Home again
More rules to flout

---

Crataegus by Dean Brindley

I find you faery tree
Standing unplanted and alone
on the green bank where gypsies camped

Garlanded and wrapped around with stones,
shielding the spring that slips out from the dell
Life giver, taker away of life

Into your bark I push
this needle from the collar of my coat
Allow it to conduct the hate that tears
the fabric of my darkling soul

Port-way to the otherworld
Hold my hope, my outstretched arms
I fear you and I will protect you

Three times ‘round the circle walk
And each step closer to your bole
I close my eyes that I can see

Into your bark I push
this needle from the collar of my coat
Allow it to conduct the hate that tears
the fabric of my darkling soul

---

Willow Feels the Chill of Winter by Raine Geoghegan

Sharp frost fills the air. The ground hardens.
Stripped of colour like the sky, you shed your leaves and weep.
As you turn inwards, Merkstave crawls into your trunk while the earth groans.
You are more stone than bark.
Once you gave refuge to wolves. They leapt into your branches, slept at your feet, listened to Odin’s footsteps,
He who wandered through the woods, bearded, one-eyes. When he lay down at night the wolves licked his hands.
Is this what you long for?

Merkstave – Runic word for confusion

---

Pinkish white path by Sheila Salway

Waving trees in the sun
Pinkish white path
Create patches that quiver
Roots exposed
the earth`s ribs

---

In the woods by Ruth Esther Gilmore

Hear, I say to myself, hear,
hear, the raindrops falling,
feel the moisture rising.

How many times will you
hear the rain
on fallen leaves?

How many times will you
feel the moisture
on risen dreams?

Hear, I say to myself, hear,
hear, the time falling,
feel the change rising.

Every time goes through a change,
but every risen change
has its own time.

When time rises over change,
there is a change
that falls through time.

---

Prayer by Carol Howarth

under Scots Pine,
look up.
a hundred feet deep,
sky a watery blue,
flecks of white vapour swirl
lazily through.

flock of starlings submerge
in waves,
sunlight glints
on green and blue
windows to the mind.

trunk deeply scored,
years measured by rings of time;
sometimes plenty,
sometimes lean.

rustling anxiety as storms approach,
high winds whip branches
into a symphony of sound,
thick branches submit, sway,
bend, sacrifice,
soften, still.

reflection, resolution.

birdsong breaks the silence,
a robin trills,
the distant thrum of a woodpecker,
in this cathedral.

---

Woodland Harmony by ADS

Even the birds seemed hushed, as
I wandered on familiar well-worn ways.
Memories interlinking, overlapping,
Under a light canopy of leafy trees.
Soft shadows on sun splashed paths,
Arrayed in gently flickering patterns.
Interlaced images in a wooded glade,
Tranquil meanderings, light and shade.

---

Waiting by Kader Sevinç

Stray dogs are waiting,
night is almost asleep.
Wind is sweeping sidewalks
night is now torn apart.

grass of sleep is on the move.

The moon is nowhere around.
Buildings are sulking.
Pen is waiting for paper,
row boats for a kiss.
I am walking towards your forest.
Your smile is the earth’s lashes, a novel page under rain.

The moon is still lurking somewhere
Trees are waiting.
Rocks are waiting.

A day of festivity that echoes
with the songs of dead birds.

---

The Leaving by Michael Forester

When the marsh wind sighed and the hare’s tail swayed and waved,
I wavered.
And the valley sang a soft soliloquy in requiem.
I did not see the mist hang low upon the brook bed’s broken back
or watch the roe buck toss indifferent antlers at my memory.

“Why?” asked a sullen gorse flower.
But the question was rhetorical.
“Why now?” the field mouse added, singing solo to the rustling oak leaf chorus.

The ponies think themselves the masters of their destiny,
but merely play at freedom til the Drift.

And I?
I had no more choice than they.
I turned my back and drove away, branding the ground with temporary tyre tread.

And the Forest brushed my dust from off her feet.

---

Through the Woods by Graeme Sandford

When travelling through the woods,
take care;
and, if you happen to see a flicker of flame
from a fire there,
ignore it,
and continue upon your way-
trolls are not friendly
they’ll eat you
as soon as look at you,
and if they do look at you
they are just sizing you up
to see what sort of a meal you will make.

So,
please take care
if you are wandering there.

---

A Swarm of Stars over the Autumn Woods by Steve Geliot

A silver light is ringing through the high pines,
A soft tinitus,
Sweet as a lover’s kiss,
Tender fingers of light
Running down the tall trunks,
Down, down,
Chiming in the leaves strewn beneath,
Forming a waist high halo in the bracken.

Kewick, kewick,
Close at first,
Then distant.

Quiet now.

Then the slow building swish
Gliding through the canopy,
Filling invisible sails,
All of them straining momentarily,

Then settling.

---

Major Oak by Jennie Turnbull

We could not circle its girth, alone
and ancient in the corner of the playground,
but we knew its worth. It furnished us

with dolls’ teacups and soup bowls balanced
on saucers of stone, shed fans of green
fingers and elfin heads in bobble hats, a currency

kinder than conkers. It was temptation
to small tarzans, a safe home for hide and
seek, and a perfect base for tig. Later

we learned of Robin Hood and Charles II, of
hollow secrets and lofty fear, discovered
wartime coffee and oak leaf wine, drank

our first legal halves in the Royal
across the road, emerged at closing time
silly and in love. Simple then

to swing up into its outstretched
arms, carve hearts and initials
into forgiving bark. We had

the future at our feet: this precious woodland
path which, heedless of its many gifts, pounding
out our daily run, we trample underneath.

---

Woodland Bathing by Anne Steward

Rise early in May, June, July…
Leave footprints in wet grass, in hoof-steps of shy deer,
Under flickering canopies of woods, aged and new.
It’s good to take time to know we belong.
Listen to arias of blackbirds, full throated thrushes,
Fine duels of robins just maybe a cuckoo, and always a dove.
An impromptu performance of fine-feathered choirs.
Let the sweetness of hawthorn, meadow-sweet, nettle flowers,
Bathe you to calm.
Rise early in March while grass is still frosted,
And mist slips among birch boles like memories of dreams.
Look up to the pale skies
Through fine-drawn tracery of stripped-naked trees.
Look back at your footprints.
There’s a moment of time to show we were there.
A wood brings us back to where we began

---

Security by Richard Hawtree

When woodland slips whatever you ask
into her lilt of birch and broad oak tree
don’t seize her, offer a second chance –
make leaf light your security.

---

The Grassy Plain by Dona Pratnekar

Ah, coolness lays on the plain
and dusk beckons me to a chase game
to run ‘twix its sleek tails of grass
all barefooted, naked and wild

Oh the mossy ground of forest pines
here we stand under rainy skies
and dreamy clouds chased by the winds
hint of long forgotten things

Ah sweet coolness of the plain
with sleek mists and weedseeds stuck to my name
hidden creek churns under the rock
its endless voice an echoing song

Oh sweet stillness of the night
with whispered tales and unseen life
Dance of wisps, to me so dear
in my cloak of feathers I disappear

---

Regrowth by Sean Smith

The winter sun slinks low,
its light shaded by grey garden walls.
The trees turn, green bleeds into red and
the cherry tree, blossom long since wind-kissed,
covers its leaves in grave dust,
a memorial shroud to those pink pollen days.

The world turns.

Lemon yellow leaves, jaundiced with age,
flicker bright and drop in a carpet of burnt orange
whose flames sterilise the mountain side.
And in the blackened embers, two green shoots,
lift themselves from a blanket of ashes
and wrap a new season in their embrace.

---

Painted Trees by Frances Knott

Someones been in the Garden and painted all the trees
I`m not sure if it’s Elves or Fairies
I know it wasn’t me.
They have painted all the trunks a lovely shade of gold
and given all the leaves a multi coloured coat.
There is pink, red, orange and blue
The only colour missing is the one I would have painted too.
I love the colour purple and everything I own is in different shades of purple
Even my lavender scones…

---

Hundred Year Old Tree by Darinka (Dinks) Radovanovic

You were always a need, never a want
A necessity, as food and water
But now feel the need is greater
As life itself and people come and go
You don’t judge, you don’t hurt, or say no
You are part of my seed, my spirit, my emotional growth

Love to lay down, intertwined with mother earth and the blade
Imagine your roots beneath me, nurturing, protecting, energising
You are the constant , always there,as cotton around its reel

I speak, you listen
A calmness, a stillness surrounds and stays
Look up towards your lush green canopy
As it changes into a feathering shawl
Your arms spread out invitingly, with beckon

As the beat of you meets the beat of me
Fingertips touching , connect
Feel the roughness of your garment
Don’t want to let you go
You are a capture, my capture
As the lens holds you in time

---

Unremembered Woods by Diane Jackman

The names come from myth:
Pignut Spinney, warm and brown.
Hangingstone Rocks, black and carmine fissures.
The Outwoods, brilliant with bluebells.

My father rambled and scrambled
through trees and over rocks as a boy,
with Ernie Brewin of the crumpled ear.
His new mother spilt candlewax on his head.

My mother courted among the bluebells
dropped the flask of tea on a parched Sunday.
Not the only thing that made
the afternoon so memorable.

The children in our street,
“Are you coming up Hangingstone?”
Bikes, Corona, sandwiches in greaseproof.
I was never allowed.

Sixty years on, from my distant home,
I’ve pinpointed the names on a map.
I shall go on pilgrimage before I die,
see for myself at last.

---

The Screaming Tree by Clive Grewcock

When planning the route for a walk, the best explanation is given by highlighting a landmark. A distinctive tree that has become known as ‘The Screaming Tree’ is one particular point of reference. Notable for the gaping hollow in its trunk that leans back as though shouting up to the heavens.

Standing alone in the woodland, creeping
Too close to the path while shouting disdain
At anyone catching his eye. Swearing at you,
You would swear he watches your very direction
To make sure you keep moving along.
Guarding his wooded hollow, with wide yawn Scream
At passers bye like a shout from Edvard Munch.
“How dare you!”
It’s not surprising he’s standing alone,
Those of a weaker character have been scared away.
The contorted Screaming Tree stands guard in
His overgrown hollow, surrounded by jagged nettles
And sharp edged bottles kicked at his feet.

They say trees speak with fellow flora through
An underground language of twisted roots.
The howling mouth silently screams at the disturbing
Sights he senses from the damp centre of his creation.
Angered by age, this elder protests gentle ways are
Seldom heard. Shouting from frustration for us to hear.
Fresh saplings flutter their confetti leaves in the breeze,
To the disgust of interrupting this ancient primal scream.
Angry at a loss of solitude grown from the first fallen seed.

---

I Think This Tree is Smiling – Thomas Keating-Jones age 9, written up an oak tree

I think this tree is smiling
With the light of the sunshine warming up its tiny new green leaves
I also feel like smiling
as the sun washes away the darkness in our hearts
I think that tree is smiling
With happiness and joy, as I look through a window where the cherry blossoms danced in the wind
Gone now
Time is passing

I think my tree is smiling
As he knows his role in the world
I can feel its strong branches
It can feel my tiny hands
I am up in its canopy hidden from the lockdown world
My view is special and just for me
I think this tree is smiling
Smiling straight at me
I feel like smiling
I feel free.

---

Seed, Whip, Sapling by Ian Royce Chamberlain

Children of the forest reach
for parents’ dangling fingers
straighten slim as needles
point to where the sky is hiding
climb the seasons, stretch
to be the tallest in the under-jungle
up and up against the tallest odds
to show their faces to the sun.

But for those who never make it –
deer-stripped, uprooted, trodden down –
there is a kind acceptance as the forest
takes them back into its heart
to lie among the still-born and the beaten
blanketing the next generation.

---

The Call of The Oak Tree by Elizabeth Holt

Hear my rallying call,
People of this land.
Be in awe of
The majesty of my history.
I have witnessed great joy,
And boundless sorrow,
In equal measure.

I play the generous host to mistletoe.
My own fruit nourishes
Small creatures and men alike:
Take the acorn from its tiny cup,
Pound it to make flour,
Or bury it and forget
So that I might re-birth.

I have borne restless men across sea-miles,
Carried home the spoils of conflict,
Nestled within my wide arms.
I have sheltered would-be kings
Escaping from the field of battle,
And commoners who would rob from the rich
To give to the poor.

Hear the drums of war and clash of my staves.
I have seen battle,
My strong body bent
To form sleek, hard crescents,
Releasing waves of sharp arrows
To pierce metal; freeing men’s souls
From their too-fragile bodies.

I have lived for a thousand years
And live on still,
My wracked frame
Supported with metal trunks,
Yet my mighty heart beats on.

Hear me once again, my people,
And know yourselves through me.

---

Harbinger of Harvest or Pandemic Spread by Jules K Blue

At the silent, soft, dim light of dawn,
a drift of breeze blew across the lawn;
an apple fell
and all hell
broke loose:
a complicit glint of green-gold burned
a sparked path through the sepia-shaded
furore of foliage,
exploding on the ground
only to fall back to recover the fallen fruit;
a stunned dun toad jumped,
goaded mute;
birds burst dumbstruck and disappeared
beyond the reaches of disturbed branches;
wherever the apple rolled
it crushed like a wrecking ball
and stole the former peace and dignity
of orchard repose,
now broken
for an eternity.

---

Before, Mind by Martha Iris Blue

a world hidden from everything
sleeps silent –
I am kaleidoscopic
patterned delicate, petal-like – but
I am hidden like winging moths in camouflage
if I hear a soft rustle then what?
I see silver shades of a Hunter’s Moon,
and birds blurring into yellows and oranges
drained from emotion
here are dark depths of thought

now there are warmer winds –
the first sign of the circle of doom that hurts with its spoon,
sweeping this forest like a broom into a room
of rest, dark-like –
like a nest from the top height of a naked tree
still, it still waits for me

stark, skeleton-esque trees, bony in their leafless look,
hang in stony shock, seem to lean against the whey-grey skyline
a second sign
where has this second Autumn come from-
are we sinking deeper…?

a lower sun descends, what has begun?
darkness opposite the light of summer turns again itself from dark,
and old waters mingle together in a wet spectrum of glow

sun still melts spiders’ webs and dew invisible. But the light is new …
we are plunging into this unfamiliar muddle of death-
today I looked out from my window,
hemmed in by desolate tall angry townscapes, tallasgiants,
that cast unmovingshadows which roar like constant trains,
and I am foregroundstuck,
surrounded by distanced crowds of coldupsetbusying people, scurrying like rustles of litter.
I mingle like the wind but leave no footprints here.

I will remember it, too.

---

The Harmony of Familiarity by Aurora Blue Age: 11

some autumn thoughts

are like flown birds,
my own-grown garden birds

are crisp webs crisping leaves dry
joining a web of familiarity

are making temporary homes
as life repeats itself year after year

are coming around again and again,
foraging a new cadence

are growing underground and waiting,
borrowing from acrobatic tunnel spiders

are slowing up like tight-rope walkers and climbers
on webbed ladders to

the harmony of familiarity

---

The Naked Man Tree by Stefan Markovski

I want to
I want to
I want to
I want to
I want to
I want to touch
The tree of my life
Wild strawberry, colored
Turned upside-down like a planet
When sweet autumn leaks its sugars
I’ll unbind my senses when they get touched.
After the very first touch by a human hand
My illustrious naked tree of Mount Kožuf
Turns upside-down and suddenly falls
To all the other solo trees there
Just like the planet
Or my dreams.

---

Lone but Vibrant Tree in the Field by Pepi Stamkov

I’ve been driving my car up the hill,
nothing shall, must or will.
But a vibrant tree in the field.
A long ride, accompanied by no one,
a voice in my head cheering: “Go on!“
Hours went by, leaves dry and crunching,
with a blink of an eye, rockets are launching.
In the galaxy.
In outer space.
In a place.
“Is the light playing tricks on me?“
Heard someone say, sat next to me.
“Who are you, interrupting me?“ I protest,
“Looking at me, postured like a grotesque.”
“I am scared, I shall exist in your mind.” he proclaimed,
Being weird, a curious character my mind obtained.
Let’s have a chat, my mind and yours,
the mind power going on world tours.
We’ll smile, joke, jive and laugh,
And be the best in our craft.
“What’s the craft?“ I asked with delight.
“Just being us, enjoying the sunlight.“
“Let’s go!“ he remarked,
I followed him, had my territory marked.
We saw the stars, we saw the sky,
the light, the dark, each and every sigh.
Curious as was I,
Gonna ask a question on time.
“Why is there a fire here?”
Through murmur, he said:
“That was the lone but vibrant tree in the field.”

---

Big Ben by Alex Lombardo

Broken chords sing discordant tunes over twice the speed of sound like a jet plane.
It’s bright but I shiver a rush starting in the back of arms racing through the shoulder blades.
We’re alive at least, it could be worse, the best is yet to come. Break the silent pond let the goldfish breath,
give the morning its voice, the day has begun. The door is open, a cold gush
of air rushes upstairs and comes down with boyish charms.
The monster truck needs fixing, it won’t
work, time to solder, change batteries, replace aerials. Our directive is clear, look after number one,
it’s not too difficult to have fun in the good weather thank God. It’s a monopoly, with natural vulnerability,
a good time to preserve the cherished childhood moments. I go to the other side for you,
when you hold my hand we step over the stream deep in the bluebell wood when all I want to do is go home.
We sat by the sinking mud and stones as water rushed through my ears,
it takes away the hurt of village confrontation and I am a child again in my father’s hand.
It’d been a tough day and while we searched the water lilies in the pond for goldfish, shoals surfaced, the big one we named, Ben,
when we’re both ready to come back, you’ll have been to the other side and know what to do, when the broken parable sings.

---

The Tree in My Garden by Marina Ikonomova Shokeva
Your branches bowing, kissing the Earth,
Yet, full of dignity.
S? strong, reliable, down-to earth ,
Like an experienced sage,
Still with your head in the clouds,
Aspiring, dreaming, shivering.
Your balance gives me stamina.
I feed my soul with your simple harmony,
I feed my body with your grace.
My teacher, my lover, my friend.
Life giver, healer, adviser.
I warm my heart, hugging your stem
I calm my mind ,lulling in your crown.
Most of all, I learn a lot –
That standing in one spot
One can still get very far.
Comforted by your side, in your noble shade
My heart sings quietly, full of love, full of joy:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

---

The Arborist by Simon Cockle

She’s climbing a tree
or is it the tree climbing her?

Unruly child, the limbs
stretch to meet each new limb.

Her roots will hold
in a winter storm

but summer cannot contain
the fuel that keeps the bonfires lit.

Ancient bark, a sleeve for young sap
and the tunic of leaves,

reaching for the sun.
Who will get there first?

---

I Still Remember by Morgan Johnson

Glancing at the sky,
with the sun shining high.
ecstatic memories and secrets shared,
still in reminiscence of how much I cared,
and your hazel eyes at which I stared.

Perfect photo of us sitting in the grass,
and you chugging lemonade in the glass.
Cheer and giggles captivate the air,
with the bracelets we used to wear,
but now our encounters are very rare.

Always and forever we used to say,
but that is until you walked away.
Now clouds cover the sunlight up there,
betrayal and deceit is everywhere,
just an old memory that I don’t go near.

---

Bluebell by Sarah-Jane Crowson

The massed scent is heavy,
like damask roses smelled through rain.
Bluebells waterfall the steep ridge,
called out by coppices, lit
by stitchwort constellations.
If picked, their petals bruise from lavender
to lapis, like dreams where we lose ourselves
in woods, wake up curled
and semi-precious, a glinting lizard,
pangolin, or snake. We leaf out,
furred with moss, nested, the forest
floor our feather bed.

Used for setting feathers upon arrows
and to cure snake-bite.
Flower of grief and mourning,
Of Libra, under Venus

---

The Way Through The Woods Rebuilt by Richard Stephenson

They shut the road through the woods
(taken from Kipling’s Way Through The Woods)

They shut the road through the woods
Aye and tore the trees down too
Once home to badger and Bird
To make a home for me and you

When they shut the road through the woods
They didn’t think of the Badgers set
Or where the ring dove builds a nest
To give us the best home we could get

Once a road through the woods
Now a street of brick and tar
And the horse of the old ways
A replaced by the family car

They shut the road through the woods
To build a world for you and I
But for the beauty of the woods
They never stopped to ask why.

---

Burnt Orange on Green by David Babatunde Wilson

Early summer
Evening sun
Angled upward
Lighting tall trees
Striking shaded
Undersides of leaves
Burnt orange
On green

---

Hollow Ways by Peter Roe

In cloth of ochre the trees stand sway
Beside the hidden ancient way
A sunken path from days of old
Cut from the earth in blocks of gold
This secret place before too long
Will swell with the voice of evensong
As Nature calls her children home
From their quest for food where’re they roam
This change of guard at fading light
Is done this way by Nature’s rite
And creatures of the night hold sway
Till comes the light at break of day

---

Wandering Forest by Tiziano Fratus

Tiziano was one the Festival’s visiting Versopolis poets in 2017

There
is a forest
living inside me,
a sung and endless silence,
streams flowing and animals that run.
I don’t know who I am, the voice is repeating,
I don’t know who I am. Yet I feel there is this world of
fine weaving living in a place without any border,
here, in my chest, in my heart, in my mind.
It settles in my hours of sleep and feeds
my hours of thought. This is why
when I go back to a real forest
I feel like I want to scream,
to love as a mother who
doesn’t discern a son
from another son
would do.
I am a forest
who walks, a forest
who roots in and
roots out

---

The Unruliness of Trees by Susan Wigmore

I had always rather liked the tree
that marked one corner boundary of your plot.
Limited in ambition, suburban in nature – yes –
but jaunty in demeanour. A catwalk tree
a tree with attitude, my mother would have said.
Stewartia sinensis rosata, a name with which to grapple.
But you ignored its Latin stylishness,
its dog rose flowers flushed the sweetest pink,
the drunken bees, soundtrack to a summer’s day,
and damned those leaves red as a child’s crayon
for their falling and ruffling the precision of your lawn.
It mattered not that Kubla Khan fed on honeydew
when its stickiness turned a sooty black
on windows and car bonnets, and roots
no doubt undermined with stealth unnatural
the foundations of your very house itself.
So I place flowers now with sorrow but no surprise
on your plot as far away from trees as you could lie;
I know how much you would like the reassuring
crunch of gravel, the neatness of the path.

---

Tree of Winter by Natasha Sardzoska

Cold fire in the forest
Rough rinds on the edge of this window
I see: I burst shivering without thinking
in a burning inter-zone
that restores me
and glows and wriggles
my bones my womb
and yelps without my name
without your recognition.
A fish from a northern sea
You give me
a grasp of wheat and
you spit a bit of wine in my mouth
You are my race
my unease
turgid seeds
uprooted dry
layers
Your
skin
on my feet

---

Than Trees by Simeon Jr. Dumdum 

Love we may call what is greater than trees
Because it rises much taller than trees

They sit before a little waterfall
And they to me appear bigger than trees

I’m on a bridge standing across from them
They see nothing of me other than trees

Because love does strange things to gravity
They must be flying now higher than trees

Because what grows has a voice of its own
But love can be so much louder than trees

Because their love will last beyond their time
The mortal lovers live longer than trees

But then most things end with the afternoon
Whose light has brought the dark closer than trees

They walk towards me who must move away
And find another place farther than trees

Because your love now bids me come home, calling,
“Simeon,” and to me you’re dearer than trees.

---

What the Japanese boy told me by Janet Wright

The Japanese boy
loved winter’s leafless branches:
trees’ calligraphy.

---

A few days’ rain by Al Verey

A few days’ rain
After a bleak month
And the hollow land
Cannot slake its thirst.
The rivulets through the wood
Still run dry.

I hide under a beech
Listen to the river
Watch the lozenge leaves
Suddenly flinch
As if a piano hammer
Were arbitrarily striking out some
Tuneless music

---

My Sycamore Tree by Jonathan Clark

I was six. It was my sycamore tree.
To scale its branches, looked so huge to me.
Skywards glance up this towering staircase,
My beanstalk step to my secret cloud space.
First step, first branch, first base beyond reach,
A nearby wheelbarrow gives giant leap.
Unlikely springboard to new woodland home,
I wheel and tip and start a cautious climb.
The makeshift ladder with it’s snake’s legs tilts,
As lean to slips and I’m arse over tit.
Tumbling, spinning, like a sycamore seed
Returned with a bump oh how I’d been tree’d.
A broken wrist from my sycamore tree
So no more climbing, stick to poetry.

---

The Oldest Oak by Susan Mobbs

On every bank a scatter of primroses among drowsy cowslips
jewel violets under hedges, while stitchwort stars the tall grass.
Today the oldest oak is crowned with green, welcoming another spring.
This tree has seen a thousand dewy April mornings
with clouds of blackthorn blossom and the green haze on hawthorn.

The little river runs eastward to the sea, the fields beside
have long felt the hand of man, they left the tree to fate and let it grow
now its crooks and hollows shelter owls, wood-mice a sinuous polecat.
Touch the fissured skin to feel the rooted pull of the earth
lift your head, you are with new leaves open to the sky.

---

The Sentry By Nicholas Soar

Each Saturday morning the boy took himself off
From his village house to the bridge over the stream.
At the midpoint, on the rise overlooking the
Meandering, tumbling shallow gushes below
A grand sycamore tree’s roots opened and
Gripped in a fist a great split sandstone boulder.
The boy wondered often whether the roots were crushing
The rock or holding its cleaved strata in tension.
Boulder and bark loom, almost falling onto the knot
Of the rising tarmac track. In this tense, vice-clutching
The roots remember the passing of Roundhead
Cavalry troops; of quiet carriage of new lambs; of lovers
Kissing and drunken orchard-pickers fighting; the slow
Trot of mares and hounds and flashes of crimson. Root-knowing:
A memory hive of the great meadow fire underneath and
Flooding salting and silting; and the now reckless new rush
Of metal and rubber and glass hurtling passed, past.
The roots feel the beat of the boy’s walk, his steps,
His whistling like the wind from the north that surrounds again, again
But he does not hear the rock-bound roots speak to roots
Below, between, the insulated soil murmurings, secreting words
Through rhizomes: mycelia to mycelia – an internet of fungal shivering
In the dew below the grand 30 metres of leaves, trunk and pendant samaras.

---

First Breath of the Morning by Jenny Rhoderick

Heavy moss fills the air
Thick, but beckoning,
Dew lingers well after the suns awakening,
Mist rises- the earth breathes
as the warm sun, wakes up the trees
Little wrens, chirp and flit around
As the dew drop clusters, hit the ground,
Tiny critters, seem in a hurry
So busy working
Across bark, they scurry
A feast for my eyes
A hug for my skin
My heart is nurtured, by the trees I am seeing
My soul breathes in this woodland wonder
As the earth is woken by her nurturing mother.

---

Sonnet for a Primal Wood by Daril Bentley

This is the light and these the leaves despair
had been had Adam woke to no one there.
Little has changed in this garden since that.
We inhabit this lonely cage of bones
dug from clay and set upon Ararat
to teach the earth the meaning of its stones.
We are not dense core but the tender air
brought forth through the ages from the forest
that traces to the tree of Eve’s great dare.
Our flesh, however pure, will not have rest
in this paradise of impermanence
that pins a leaf against the clothes we wear.
We can but show the source due deference
and work to earn a world our sires thought flat.

---

Found by Five Cram

This forest dreams in decades,
details vanish – the flash of mountain
bikes, gangs of hiking teenagers:
events here are seasons, growth,
sifting decay, the random attack
of storms – who’s next to topple?

Drift of autumn confetti lays
booby traps over tarry mud,
beetle totters doggedly onward,
crazed ploughing scars of boar,
ticklish skittering of squirrel claws,
tiny fungus like stretched skin,
beneath the gracious majesty of trees.

Lost among giants, dissolved in vastness,
I breathe freely, heart lifted,
thoughts evaporate in edgeless space:
absence I can be truly present in.

---

My Blossom Tree by Deanna El Khoury

My Blossom Tree saw better days:
when I would run through woods’ walkways
under rays of beating sunlight.
I watched you on star-studded nights,
green shoots became My Blossom Tree

your limbs watched as I sipped my tea
the sky’s colours swirl wild and free.
Peace broke as builders yelled and drilled;
the sky darkened with each grey cloud.
I stood with you, our bodies tense

but time can’t steal sweet memories:
light meals of cake and raspberries;
a wedded kiss beneath your arms.
Love ran out yet you, you were there
throughout long years of red and gold

They told me you’re diseased. Too old.
We wrestle winter’s cold without
my wife. The kids never visit.
I will never let them part us
If they take you down, I will go down too.

---

A Woodland Tale by Ellis Charlesworth

Upon the fronds of bracken i tread
Through the deep dark world of the woodland bed.
Tis in this place as black as ink
I dare not make my eyes to blink.
Among the gnarled old trunks and branches
A hundred mocking leering faces.
Tho fleet of foot and soft i tread
On i go,deep through the glade
My arboreal world of dark and shade
Moving through the understorey
I realise that for me there is no retreat
For here my destiny i shall meet.
So when next you come these woods to roam
Mine is the face ye shall meet!!!

---

Nan Tuck’s Lane by Mike Bell 

Over Buxted, into folklore,
our sniggered-search for Nan Tuck,
the ghost of those woodlands,
a crone, flown from The Uck.

We set out as useless hunters,
on her kindling-carpeting,
the coppice of nervous laughter,
with hid fears half-echoing:

‘A dearth of any wildlife,
where Nan Tuck’s spirit waits’,
but we disturbed a leaping deer,
and were stabbed by beaked complaints.

No fearsome witch, no spells,
no cackle, no dark arts,
but stepping back onto tarmac,
we walked calmer down that path.

---

Argan by Nisha Bhakoo

The fleshy fruit of my body
is tender. Jolted
by the dehydrated roads
of Essaouira.
I lick the strawberry laces
in a wilting hand.
Distraction, in sugar.
I find it also on the other side
of the bus’s splintered window –
mudhahal!
Goats perched on branches
one-two-three-four-five—
the stoic tree blurs
out of eyesight.
Even wild bees seek its time.
The fatty liquid
in the cracked nuts
of this crooked tree,
is adored worldwide.
It bewitches saucepans,
soothes hungry mouths.
Eases tough locks
in oily lullaby.
How does the Argan tree
keep its ego in check,
when its slender branches
drip in goats and gold?

---

In a Forest Thin With Cold by Jamie Alcock

In a forest thin with cold
you sing just for the singing,
voice the space between trees.

But for the fallen snow
nothing would mark
our passing.

---

Erumpent Ochre Leaves by @poetroza de la Roza

Once verdant panels succulent with life, now kindled and suffused into dormancy by yawning Nature and Cosmic migration soon complete.

Radiant bursts bearing thick of pyre trees, blazing boughs aloft vestige trunks, the soft ambience of senescence ushering Summer to Fall.

Erumpent ochre leaves of Autumn: tawny, saffron, amber and auburn. Sun’s lapsing emittance stages ageing foliage with a gilt glow.

Now, we are witness to deciduous blessings as fiery umbrage sheds, igniting pavement and tarmac beneath sodden embers.

Ponderously I gaze upon the phenomenon of dissolution; nowhere is it more precise, more ephemeral than in this marriage –

Of Cosmic splendour and Gaea’s rhythmic flush. A flowing panoply of colours discovered within each enveloping season, steadily guiding us, evanescently, onwards.

---

In response to the question “what is your favourite tree?” by David Ashbee

What does the forest rampant,
the comical spinney, the humble copse,
think of celebrity trees –
the ones that have their names in glossy tomes ?

Do they thank the Pulpit Oak and Gospel Oak
for spreading the good news,
The Testament of Trees,
respect them for their longevity,
for putting oaks on the map ?

Or are they as curmudgeonly as me,
resenting the cult of tree personality,
grumbling “what have they got that we haven’t got? –
a King could have hidden in any of us.”

I like the herd instinct, the Commonwealth of Trees,
I like how every mob seen from a hill’s triangulation stone
is moving towards me like Birnam Wood.

I like being ushered in to the trees’ discotheque,
to stroll around touching them one by one
as the wind rhythms build.

No favourites should be any teacher’s motto.
Trunks en masse is my manifesto.
Let them thrive without a leader.

It’s recently been discovered
that they talk to themselves
through green underground networks.
It’s good to know that nature has a landline..

---

The Million by Shelby Cartwright

Reaching out from the ground
Twisted Birch and Pine creak in the wind
The green grass littered with wild flower
Blue faces, unmarked Hyacinths, barely sing
They pave the path for the many lost hours
Shared with bramble, stone and shins
On Sunday mornings we’d wander there,
Searching for secrets contained within

Army green Land Rover, a fierce metal box
Up high, I’d stare out at the brown blur
Trees, soil, manmade fence, imagined fox
The healing properties of the bark
The bird song in the gentle wind
Whether wren, woodpecker or lark
You would identify as they sing

We haven’t walked for years across
That beaten, trodden path
Discovered, there was a buzz,
they came in droves
I was Aghast

Now we only walk there in the
Bleak sunshine of my mind
Reserved for days I need the nirvana
That only wild Bluebells bring –
Trinkets of a much simpler time.

---

Hem Heath Woods by Dean Bridley

There are no dead men
in Hem Heath Woods
Not yet

Lemon-yellow leaves
spangle the path
brightening brown oaks

Burying the litter
while dog bags
decorate old trees

Birds move silently
Squirrels seek shelter
Beetles find beetles

Thick moist bark
A heavy green
catches errant winds

---

My Glorious Apple Tree by Elif Özgöçer 

There was an Apple tree down by the river.
An enrapturing scene, where grandpa picked apples for me.
I smelled the kitchen from a mile,
‘Cause grandma turned them into her famous tarts in this small town.
Please, take me back to my Apple tree.

There was an Apple tree near the field of sunflowers,
I pinched myself million times to know this is real.
Father set a swing, mother was angry because I was afraid of bees.
Captured every moment in my mind just to play it when we leave.
Please, take me back to my Apple tree.

There was an Apple tree on my road to school.
In winter, I solemnly promised to a boy that we’re in love and always will be.
We sneaked in one night, made our first kiss and wished on a wishing star.
God knows where he’s now, hope he remembers me as clear as the sky was that night.
Please, take me back to my Apple tree.

There was an Apple tree all alone under blazing sun and sheltering rain.
Wore my ripped heart on my sleeve, cried with sky on my way home till I see.
With a woeful voice I asked: “Why people are full of hatred? They give me pain!”
There was no response, only falling leaves but I guess it didn’t know too.
Please, take me back to my Apple tree.

The day I see all of this cruel world & its cruel people, I’ll come back to the Apple tree.
My eyes will be sore and I will have nothing but my hollow soul.
I’ll take my last breath, the tree will be bestowed upon me for cherishing it,
They’ll lay me there silently and let me rest among the dead livings.
Under its shadow with lavender breeze, I’ll find my peace.

Sorry to interrupt the scenery in your mind,
I’m a dreamer, when I pinched myself I woke up in agony
Because the society has chosen skyscrapers instead of big trees
But I know my tree exist somewhere in this big mad world.
Who knows maybe I’ll walk someday and there’ll be an Apple tree
Which will whisper to me, dreams can come true if you believe

---

The Forest King by Alette Bernasconi

Your palace is heady with whispering,
As you, great monach, glory in the beams of the sun,
And I, strange and unmoored, move at your feet.

Your welcome is benign and your courtiers nod,
To each other, or to me, to the sun, or the rain.
Your palace is heady with whispering.

A palpable connect caresses the air and soil,
As alliances form, munitions transfer,
And I, strange and unmoored, watch at your feet.

Your Crown Prince stands proud and pays you homage,
Catching or snatching glitters of sun falling from you.
Your palace is heady with whispering.

You, giant in the world for whom time has a different measure,
Listen and give succour and strength,
And I, strange and unmoored, wonder at your feet.

So I leave your many webs and return to mine,
The complex communications that I know my place in better,
Your palace is full of harmonious whispering,
And I, less strange and less unmoored, learnt at your feet

---

Excerpt from “Master Trees” by Franca Mancinelli* , translated from the Italian by John Taylor 

These creatures faithful to water will show you the way. As long as they resist, trails, nervures, still open up. You can follow their trembling traces.
•
Its roots are above ground. It grew them like branches. It didn’t protect them in the darkness. You don’t know how it breathes. And how many of its roots sink dizzyingly. But these that it has bared to death, these hardened veins on the surface, speak of its strength more than the foliage that it lifts up to the sky.
•
arrow for no hunt
no war
mute tongue beaten by the wind
dark torch, landmark
of our lives with its hard
fragrant bark
tattooed with stellar trails.

*permission granted

---

The Church of Trees by Sue Wallace-Shaddad

‘as though the heritage
of God was hidden in the branches
all along’
— Seán Hewitt, ‘Tree of Jesse’

Each tree reaches for heaven, sap rising,
confident it can grow, rooted deep
in the earth below.

Each bud a renewal, a promise of spring,
weathering sun and storm; each branch
a yardarm, holding true.

Each canopy spreading out in full sail,
a ship of whispering souls
leaning into the breeze.

Each arch blesses the path, casts a mosaic
on the forest floor, the dance of sunlight
through stained glass.

Each vault of green, a place to rest
where wind’s caress will shrive
my untold sins.

---

Maple by Tina Cole

If I had to choose
just one, it would be you Maple,
whose citrine branches conduct
an opera of green.

No soft focus
or photo-shopping,
no need for cropping
to tame or frame your dazzling locus.

Olive skinned in Spring,
with wrinkle thin faced promises
that turn wily grimaces
into citrus smiles.

Later, pink-brown wheat freckled leaves,
like straw hats of childhood days
when plaits and ribbons
skipped a countdown to the August blaze.

A chameleon tree of shifting shades,
zingy lemon limes, chartreuse,
sage laced veins
that outshine dusty pines.

You know the old trick of alchemy,
that yearly turn of green to red and gold,
while glittering Gods play flicker games,
skitter shady repetitions.

I want a long song, to celebrate
your great beauty, to sing alongside
you in sisterly earth, keep the anchor
of our worth.

---

Lament for an Ash © Lizzie Ballagher

Leaves full of light,
leaves feathering & fanned
on finest paper stems
all light as the air
that blows between…

yet overwritten
with rustling messages,
hissed warnings
inscribed by summer winds
as sickness stalks you:

tar oozes from the cleft
of trunk & branch.

Wounds widen,
split your smoothness,
crack your bark.

No more your green ballet
on grey skies:

leaves darken, shrivel,
dangle, drop.

Lesions deepen.
The canker grows.

Cloven open,
diamond-hard crevices
yawn, send
unseen spores
flying.

Then must I fell
or burn you?

---

White Poplar by Patrick Osada

Way, way before the Marvel crew found fame,
true super-heroes, fabled sons of Gods
left signs on Earth of how they made their names —
appeared in verse composed by Hesiod.
Hercules wore a wreath of poplar leaves
to snatch away from Hades Cerberus,
his garland, white from sweat, so we believe —
his battle with that dog was vigorous.

White poplar now wears leaves with one side green,
their underside of white in winds will show
like the wreath of the hero of our dreams,
fresh from his labours, many years ago.

Breeze in white poplar whispers down the lane :
soft sounds from canopy like ghosts or rain…

Hesiod, poet, contemporary of Homer.

---

The Water That Beckons Me In by Adam Davies

The water that beckons me in,
Laughs with me,
Lolls over my skin

It trickles down
The contours of my body
Resurfacing

Mine is the only human sound
Amongst a peaceful harmony
Of hoots
Of hums
Of howls –
Up there in the forest’s symphony.

In the privacy of the jungle
I feel at ease
And as I wade forward
A child-like playfulness
Within myself
Begins to blossom.

---

Tending The Magic Garden by Simon Tindale

I’ve been fighting dandelions
all of my life.
Now we’ve drawn a line
I’m drinking dandelion wine.

Follow me through hollow trees
to the edge of the well
where rows of hocus-crocuses
are casting their spell

and from the magic holly bush
a baby crow flies
high above the redwoods
into star-berried skies…

after crapping all over my garden furniture…again.

---

O Birch High Above by Sabrina Durmaz

O birch high above,
where do your eyes lie?
Do you see the perched
robins who peacefully fly
to you entrance of leaves
where they nestle their youth
protected from the raven thieves
who steal from their twigged booth?

O birch high above
where do your eyes lie?
Do you watch as I trot
through your fellows to try
towards the deep knot
where I hear the wind’s current cry?
The wood’s protective veil,
gallantly shields me from my mind.
I discover distraction as I cross your trail
and eventually calm is what I find.

O birch high above
where do your eyes lie?
Do you simply observe the sick sign
of the Bronze Borer who passes by
your weak, light spine?
Their tubular tunnels,
wilt your frail bark and soul.
Hollow lines cross like puzzles,
causing your skin to scroll.
The stories you tell,
countless years of ringed truth,
even after your foliage fell,
and your stump is no longer smooth,
you have released my stress,
so, now, please take your rest.

---

Where Our Woods Were by Faisal Binzagr

Time flies by,

Blown across entwined vines
Pages that speak ages
In circular lines
Thousands of them
Towering
Breathing life, now
Wave them all goodbye

Mother said:
The resin is what they cry instead
No tears on these leaves
Except the ones you leave behind
When there’s nothing else
to wipe your eyes with
On the day I die

Lost memories
How they all looked so nice
Huddled together in a line
Reduced to fine
Ash in the soil, now
They’re in my mind
Imprints of lifetimes in rings, fading as

Time flies by.

---

A beautiful walk under the wooden garden by Uday Shankar Durjay

In the absence of extraordinary beauty I have been waiting for a brand new summer. A nature must be more natural and more charming than any one’s expected. A significantly long wait was hanging in my note pad, believe so summer will knock me out promptly. Windows are kept on, the doorbell is activated, close circuit cameras keep watching around. I accept, wind will listen to the whispering of the branches those are leaning on each other. Cheerful breezes will make a wave in the hearts of trees, I just have been waiting to capture.

I would see her shadow left behind, some maple leaves blown over it to absorb fragrances. I would have a beautiful walk under the wooden garden, sunlight will change its name to flash light; ray of lights are not lights they are bows of sun, just falling in. Might be, there is a river inside me to take a divine drive to Ocean from this forest. I won’t let it be finished so soon. Though once summer finishes I hear the whispering of the branches of trees. My stunning eyes get stuck to the brightness of the leaves where sun painted a green on it. Quivering leaves are knocking behind me, summer will go soon. Leaves will go off quicker.

Lea Bridge Road
Leyton, London

---

Quercus by Mark Carson

Sadly, Quercus corcus never made it, though I feel you should,
standing louchely in your rust-red leggings, insouciant groups
of you like Shakespeare’s bravos, in a wood, near Cortez.
Ho! Alcornoque, Acorn Oakey, your suber sobriquet
collapsing into Latinate tautology, a quirky disappointamente.

Quercus ilex made it. Ha! I’d swear the Holly Oak, but
I’d be wrong, Encina you’re the Holm Sweet Holm
that Horace loved, his small black pigs unseen
but heard a-snuffling in understorey industry.
So easily mistaken for the Muppet Oak,

the Kermes, Quercus coccifera, that truly is
the Holly Oak, your spiny leaves sometimes right justified,
but often not, so variable from crown to sucker,
smooth to prickle, slick to hairy, Iberians confused?
Heck! I’m confused, shameful they have left you nameless.

As for Quercus faginea, are you Quegigo, the Lusitanian,
with naked hairless balding leaves? I’m lost;
and you, you creeping gryke infestor, rock-hugger,
in habit emulating ivy – can’t find a single acorn –
Huh! be you a knobbly-robley oak at all?

---

Ledbury Park by Lydia Lee

September awakens to this 21st day
of this monumental year of 2020
First mist veils the tree horizon
sighing the hill
with its diaphanous blur
Lush green becomes haze
A million minute droplets
sneak into the vacant duckpond.
As I glaze
a zillion drops morph
and oh so slowly glide
. . . effortlessly
surrendering
to the sun

---

Healesville (Victoria, Australia) by Kelly Hill

You and I
stroll hand in hand
along a much-trampled path
crushed rocks shifting beneath our feet
while all around us
eucalyptus sway and dance
their fragrance moves through the air

masses of banksia
a feast for the eyes
i watch the bees flit
from each bronzed brush
and the leukodendron
unfolding like stars
beside delicate clematis blooms

we stop at a bridge
listen
as water skitters over a jagged creek bed
a gentle melody
holds me close
as a kookaburra’s voice
quakes in the distance

glacial wind
grows in strength
as we huddle together
you
like always
keeping me from veering off the path
captivated
by birds of every colour
singing tributes to the trees.

---

Years of Autumn by David Trame

They have brought poems, lines in which
we have wished to hear the shuffling
of the ever present dry leaves, or their sticky sloppiness
after the rain, their fiery burnt brown-orange brushing,
their whirling in the first cold winds on the bank of the river
while your scarf’s frills fluttered and your hair filled
your breast like wings while you were tightening your coat
and were busy talking about the future days’ streams
in this season full of waves of reason or no reason to expound
on this windy ground filled by a Mr. Tambourine Man sound…
on the distant present land walking close to each other,
when the final months of the year had just started
and we wanted them to be the longest, with folds to hold,
-in my end is my beginning, the quartet had begun,
and the wind blew and the light ran and the day ran
lasting through in a way I confess I would like to digress
about, on that very bout when the wind casts the further,
more determined final gust, on the ever busy beloved bank,
in a further swirl, an entwined tornado, a flurry of leaves
making you feel that all flashes cease to never cease.

---

Tender Roots by Christopher Jelly

I like trees that throw
that creak and groan
and roar from brows
flailing birching snapping
all jagged and bright
wrought and splintered with billowing fight

I like woods which bruise
shadow black lightening
taunting upwards to the sky
woods that bark and bite the air
bewitched
unhitched
barbaric
beware

I like woods which growl
slow deep and dark
then darker

that glisten black in the rain
all sap and wick. slender, thick

and heave out hill wards with cellular strain

all ship from tip through girth to main

I like trees which bask
that drink in the sun
until leaves are crisp to golden
crown rich singed bolden
where birds claw hook and beak
and crooked knots
dither and weep
trapping secrets in tender roots
mulching skulking
all come hither cahoots

---

A Three Letter Word By Lesley Ingram

And who should say its name carrying the weight
of a three letter word?
It was a seed

sprouting the flesh of all new life, insisting.
I scooped it from the compost knowing
it would not survive, insisting

it live in a pot. I wrote nut on a label,
insisting I was right.
And it grew. At two leaves I whispered

its name, but two leaves do not insist
the gardeners say. I placed it alongside
flowery distractions.

Four leaves insist. Responsibility sits
with a weight like timber
on guardians of saplings

in need of their own earth —
and though I shall never see its might
nor hug its girth, I shall insist on its place

and carry the weight of its name,
shall say it,
the three letter word.

Oak.

---

Ariel and the Ash Trees by Christopher James

They woke me from a dream,
summoned me from my downy bed
of fern and bracken, inside a cloven tree.
I brushed away the leaves; tested my wings.
Free us they said, from the poison
that travels on the wind, the spores
that choke the lungs of England.
Bargain, spirit, for the life of our Ash.

In emerald light, I watched their faces,
as pale and drawn as midwinter
Have I not done thee service enough?
Where is Prospero now the Ash trees die?
They led me to a glade and showed me
branches studded with pearls.
I called for the leaf-witherers; the demons
and wood weevils. Show yourselves.

One stepped from its charmed nook,
in black robes and golden wings
Fair spirit, it said, they do not care for thee.
These men have spent their dowry.
Heeding no call except from the trees,
I cupped a breeze and blew between
thumbs until it became a cacophony that
tore through the wood and swept it clean.

---

Draco Canariensis by Suzanne Sasse

Dragon is a millenium tree,
part of Canary identity.
The Guanches used the dragons’ shade
and watched their native culture fade.
I saw some just the other day
as I sat in a street café.
Before me in the village square
were tress from almost everywhere.

The Ficus Macrophyllas’ leaves
are fibrous, deep green sunlight thieves.
Its’ branches, grey and reaching, shoot
thick tendrils in the earth to root.
The Levistona is chinese
and fanlike leaves create a breeze
at scorching 35 degrees.

The Phoenix, far too tall to climb,
perhaps from ancient Pharaoh time.
A slender bush that waves up high
planting graffiti in the sky.
The Strelitzia reginae,
a blazing flower that wants to fly,
winks at me as I walk by
and bid this precious park goodbye.

Aguilas, Murcia October 2020

---

Autumn Gold of the Soul by Alexis V

No season is more filled with ‘gold’ than this is, with the changing colour of the leaves,

The crisps glows, the vibrant yellows, mellow browns all stream in our eyes with a resigned air,

As the Autumn sights  fill our hearts and dusts our souls with the hope of  new birth of the expectant spring.

---

Forest by Diana Saunders

Do you remember swimming under the waterfall
where siskins skimmed over our heads
and perched on water-carved steps?

The freezing water made us squeal,
hoping no one would hear us
because this was our place,

our secret temple where we slid down
the almost vertical path, where trees were rocks
and rocks were moss and moss a soft pillow when we fell.

Rainbows arced, we caught droplets on tongues;
a taste of ancient wood, moorland meadow,
a trace of salt from the ghost of an ocean

and sweet colour that steeped into us.

***********

We heard it first, from a long way off;
an angry hornet going berserk in the woods
and as the weekends passed, it moved closer,
the creak and crash of trees just over the hill.
Anything that moved, moved out; the siskins,
the kingfisher, the old man downstream
in his coracle, the water voles and us.
I hadn’t been back until today. It wasn’t as
I remembered but even so,
ash leaves, purple and lime-green
burst out from cinder-black buds
and as I sat with my hand outstretched
a siskin landed and tickled my skin.

---

Every Leaf by Jason Conway

Every Leaf to shelter
the creatures spied beneath.
Veined roofs shun storms
and blanket the soiled earth,
calm, still and safe,
sponging mother’s warmth.

Highways of branches
interconnect the energy of life.
Take a ride to leaf stops
and gaze at rooftop vistas,
then glide fiery parachutes
that knit in patchwork lights.

Shimmering rays dance in skips
at Sister Breeze’s guide.
From hidden constellations,
unmapped in feathered seas,
every leaf hides beauty
to journey with your mind.

Every leaf to shelter,
every leaf to bind,
every leaf to wonder,
at Mother Nature’s kind.

---

Awake by Charlie Armstrong

Awake first light
Cold water jolts me forth
Walk
Horse chestnut tree
Conkers
I’m a child again
Where’s that string of my
Childhood days.
Onward a different path
An ancient church
Secrets held within the stones
And surrounding graves at rest
Onwards
The lake placid and still
Fishermen at peace.
A young deer alone
Dances in a field
Sun awakening from its slumber
Misty
As the deer dances joyfully
Onward
Squirrels busy
As they always are
Onward
The horses in their stable
Greet me kindly
Yearning for the dewy morning grass.
Homeward now
Birds singing
A woodpecker loud and hidden
Tuneful
Home now
My heart full.

---

Prelude by Zoe Piponides

Thumping wrists knead a totem face,
hungry squalls shift in whirlpools.
Back-scratching, crackling buds
propel a bard with wings in his fingers.
Voices break into song and tap
at windows, whisking wiry lullabies.

I’m still here, murmurs the drum.
May I? Trace evolution in your breast,
hold the air that moves between us.

Will you let me run? says the wind.
Will you let me blow my breath out?
Yash! YYaash! YYYaaasshhhh!!!

---

The Tree by Laiba Majeed 

I. This is the call of the earth,
Plant trees repeatedly.
Let’s swear together
Make your land green.
Let there be greenery on the earth,
Happy life
The tree is the pride of the earth,
Life has a smile.
Water the trees,
Give this sign of life
Let’s plant trees,
Waking up by planting trees.
May we make life happy,
Let’s plant trees

II. I come from Nature
Hoping for a nice future
I grow and grow with aims.
But every one uses me for games.
People say Oh! Good fresh air…
But carpenters say strong wood for chair…
I have lots of wishes to fulfil…
But I die without seeing my pupil…
To you I bend and bow…
And plead with a voice so low…
Please do not kill me…
By turning me into coal…
I’ll grow old till I reach my goal.

---

I was sitting with the trees by Shelagh Duffy

I was sitting with trees,
I could hear them.
They were speaking,
In the wind, blowing,
Hot air in the breeze.

I was sitting before,
They were behind,
In front, and to each side,
And I alone, save strangers passing.

I listened to their whispering,
I heard their voices strong,
Their branches moving, waving,
I was listening to their chorus song.

Wrap your arms around,
Your eyes watching, ears attuned,
The smell of soil and water,
The touch, the feel, the ground.

And underneath in hidden spaces,
Roots spread, reach out and touch,
The earth beneath my feet,
And above, the birds in branch,
Preach their song, amidst the leaf.

---

Foraging (Christmas Yew) by Suzanne Iuppa

I leave the door on the latch
take my car key out of my pocket,
hide it in the postbox, where I forget it
till Monday. The handle of the saw
zipped into my coat
nudges the base of my throat
as I climb.
Up past the clothes-line,
on the brow of the hill
overlooking the house; past the hazel junk-yard
where my neighbour tosses his rejects,
up the steep path coated in wet oak leaves
going to loam.
Earth underneath is friable,
orange-slick clay over shale.
This ridge
an old monk track, criss-crossing
pilgrim hospice and abbeys
to the south,
bandit copse and post-routes
here, and to dogged north.

I stand in the middle of a sacred grove
(not that I know).

The tree I pluck is young and graceful,
with many others surrounding; the same hue and shape,
the route to it downhill,
gorse and bramble-heavy
so many yellow flowers upturned bills
already chiming spring. I lose my footing
more than once,
but recover.
The soft fronds of branches are a hand in mine
and when I stoop to start the cut,
the saw burbles through, water dropping
into a metal pail,
drip by drip,
a hill spring trickling over my right shoulder,
down the trail, to my home,
gracing my rooms with a river, slate,
straight limbs built for arrows,
pliant green needles and everlasting life.

---

A battered sycamore, Logan Rock by Lawrence Illsley

My thoughts were eclipsed.
It happened so quickly. The nurse opened

the door. You were there. Your skin was waxy.
Bluish. Like glaucous leaves. But not relaxed.
Hard as bone. Dead like bark. So it would crack
if you grew. But you can’t. Staged. A wooden

actress playing the corpse of my mother.
A clearing. Your scarred and bossed trunk lain stiff.
Uprooted. Flat on your back wrapped in crisp
white sheets. Felled. An invasion begun long

ago. The cancer, like mycelium
strands, meandered through your precious heartwood,
greenwood and bast. Then grew, undiscovered,
in your pancreas epithelium.

Eating you up. Until all that was left
was a shell. And you fell. Your blood glutted
with sugar. Diabetic, like sap. Mud
in your veins.
A turbulent knot of once peaceful grain.

The tears I was afraid would not come, came.

On the lonely cliffs near Logan
Rock, horses are employed to grub out
non-native sycamore which have settled
there. This, the first tree I could identify,

is unpopular. They seed in gardens
where their roots upset houses and walls. Trains
skid on their slippy mucilage – the wrong
sort of leaves. Their rampant growth is frowned on

by some conservationists. Despite claims
they boost worms and rare flowers. That flying
insects love their nectar. Lichen their bark.
The West Cornwall peninsula would be

bereft without them. You loved the tracts
of sycamores in Penwith and passed this
love on to me. I think that you admired
their outsider status. An immigrant

with socialist tendencies. Mired in
idiosyncrasy and martyred by adaptability.
Resilient
in the face of a battering wind.

---

A Tree by Tania Haberland

There is a tree inside me.
It yearns to grow.

the seed was planted long ago

There has been water and light

as well as dry shadows and night

It rests at the bottom of me
Its branches gnarl my heart
trying to reach out

my spine aches with the rough crush of thorns
and my hair whispers leaves
my eyes are the hollows of a trunk

I think I am a willow
wishing to fall to the ground weeping

when finally the branches burst out
I know my fingers will tickle the soil
and I will be a tree.

---

Trees with secrets by Rose Lumbaca Crane

The tree looking up into the clouds so high.
The tree that I see talking to the cloud that is slowly passing by.
They talk about the troublesome ones that they see from so high.
Or is it a friend I knew from years ago, but how could it be, because it is just a tree, a funny looking sort of tree and I wonder do others see the grandest, greatest funny sort of tree just outside from where I reside.
The tree looking up into the sky with its head held high, looking like a proud creature, friendly and carefree with wings like an owl, wise and knowing, robust and standing firm ever so proud. Oh, such a funny sort of tree that I see.
If you look carefully it would sometimes open its wings and swoop up the sad and troublesome ones. Cradling them in its branches with so many leaves, too many to count. Swooping it would bring comfort and safety that would cushion anyone’s fall.
Up there they were cradled and held the troublesome ones so they could hear stories and secrets that would help them get through the uncertain times. But you must be quiet, sit still and breathe, observe with open heart and mind for just a while said the funny sort of tree, for that is how I can share my secrets and stories that are meant for you to help you get through for when you need to.

---

Autumn Walk by Toni Bennett

One dog large,
long golden hair,
soft brown eyes;
but a lazy, reluctant walker.

The other:
short legs, sharp eyes,
rotundel.
Enthusiastic, eager to go.

We set out:
Short legs trotting,
Lead straining.
The other hesitant, plods slowly.

Rain drops fall.
Dogs now unleashed,
separate.
The one turns back, the other trots on.

A biscuit
brings homebound back.
Smaller dog
waits impatient, stopped by a gate, shut.

Through it now
and leadless, they
sniff damp leaves,
trailing one scent and then another.

In the wood
silence deepens;
trees stand still
as we step on their fallen glory.
Once red, gold
the leaves now brown,
sink in mud
becoming part of nourishing earth.

Golden dog
has found a branch;
lazy no more
she runs with it, as rain tipples down.

Sheltering
I watch laughing
Rain, trees, grass,
Enveloping, embracing, enriching, enlivening.

---

No Trees by Leanna Lei

Where I live,
Trees are tall.
They’re organised,
Undefined by nature’s call.

Where I live,
Trees are rare.
They’re not everywhere,
But nobody cares.

Where I live,
Roads are long.
The winds whistle and whistle,
But no trees to sing along.

There are no trees,
What do they smell like?
What do they feel like?
I hope one day
Where I live,
Nature calls,
Grow common oaks and pines,
and when the wind recalls,
They’ll sing along,
And everybody
Will care.

---

Garry Oak by Karen Malim

Alone and wrapped in the swirling morning mist
The proud Garry Oak stands atop Little Mount Doug,
Splendidly unaware of its runtishness.
The trunk-tangled tree clings improbably to the rock,
Its only neighbour a delicate red-robed arbutus
Offering a low-boughed seat to weary walkers.

A bald eagle circles and lands on a thin branch
Making the oak shudder and flex.
Small buds burst through the rivulets of the leathery bark,
Replete with promise of renewed life:
For one hundred years and more the oak has stood witness
To the passing seasons, undaunted by the intemperate winds.

An ageless constant in changing times.

---

The Illusion by Karis Hales

The crisp callings of midwinter air
to pines, strong and noble
tall and fair
to silver lined maple twigs, to caught rivers
flowing in place, held back by ice
from the dull drudgery of responsibility
the grass is not greener here, but coated in frosted white
Lying underneath, drowning,
Invisible hands, suffocating,
Pretty words, Pretty deceptions
Branches crusted with tufted clouds, adorned with frozen shards,
Glinting in the almost autumnal, blazing, evening sky
Beauty in romanticized decay
Dark in light

---

In The Past by Tom Kirkpatrick

Once walking in a woodland glade the wild flowers blossomed among the shade.
I picked the blooms and tied them fast in memory for a time that’s past.

The violet grows for modesty as the winds of spring begin to sigh.
The daisy for simplicity like stars amidst the summer sky.
The wild rose for beauty with its autumn tints of red and gold the lily for purity like the winter snows so white and cold.

A bouquet formed by flowers and seasons from a fool with mixed up reasons. To that angel sent from heaven for her that was known as The Flower of Devon.

---

Almost Touching by Maggie Mackay

Rising beyond the trunks,
vertigo inducing, webs of leaves
like giant jigsaw pieces
cut loose into fantastic patterns,
the gaps between, backlit
by sunrays, air and cloud;
a neighbourly code of conduct.

---

The Forest I Roam, The Place I Call Home by India Kim

As a child, I talked to trees.
My friends the birds, the leaves and the bees.
Wild flowers in my hair,
I told the mighty oak my dreams.
Of the places I longed to see.
So full of hope and very naive,
In my world of evergreen and make believe.
I loved the forest, it was my home.
So off to the woods, I would roam.
In shallow brooks, I would swim.
Not restricted by time but childish whim.
The weeping willow would watch and smile.
When dried off, I would stay a while.
She would whisper secrets of the world,
It sounded so grand, exciting, absurd.
Eventually back to my parents, I would go,
With the sun set and land in shadow.
Only to return the next day,
Nothing could ever keep me away.
But then the bad guys came along,
Tore down the place where my friends belong.
Gone was the pine, the birch and the oak,
There was nothing left except fire and smoke.
The bark was burnt, the smell made me gag.
Playtime was over, adulthood made me sad.

---

Autumn Walks by Elena Jones

My constant friend, side-by-side
we walk these woodland trails.
Patiently, we wait for the robin to sing
as he’s sung through each season
we’ve wandered these paths –
oblivious to the woes of the world.
The turn of another year
is as the turning of the leaves,
colours as bold as our souls,
as we weather the wilt of all
hopes we had for this year.
We smile at the good parts,
laughing beneath a dolorous sky,
dimmed down by mist.
We still have our coffee.
We still have these walks.
We still have this wood.

---

Once Upon a Planet by Hiya Shah

The Tree terrific and turbulent,
Adorning my topsy-turvy terrace,
Devised it’s frame, outgrown over my mains,
Playing with its fangs, it shielded the land.

Under the overgrown mess, sprawled I,
Embracing the sweets and chocolates,
Over my head, tumbled them,
Avec their very wings, tickling my nose

Morrow till Dusk, hymn I,
Watering branches and feeding roots.
Its automn leaves, Red, Orange, Yellow.
Thawing my heart, with its pour

My mother, alighted her heart,
Beside, the Tree outskirts.
Translocated it jewels and rubies,
In her fists, thrusting in her thirst

Admiring long branches stood my Pappa
Of the Tree, huddled in the adjacent corner,
In its ribs, injecting fertile water,
As it, circled coins, in his midst.

We’ve grown, the seeds of our trees,
In every yard of our city,
Watering and pleasing our pets, everyday,
Yearning the joys of our life,

I’ve read, on Earth, Trees are slaughtered.
Would they beloved ?
Procured by them is the life preserving gas,
Nor Chocolates, neither cash or gold.

---

Two Souls by Richard Dukes

Two souls entwined
Cut by the thorns on a vine

For blood that is shed
It dries with the air we breathe
The air that we share

Forgiveness that is true
Shall peel away the stain

Forgiveness that is true
Shall take away the pain

And for the thorns that exist
The vine can grow
Adapt so that they’re missed

And turn them against outside force
Not internalise or new wounds cause

Two souls entwined
Until the end of time

---

Come for a walk by Fay Pilliner

Come for a walk, says Daisy
We can follow the woodland path.
We can climb a tree, says Ivy
It’ll be fun we’ll have a laugh.
We can make a swing, says Willow
And film it on our phones.
We can build a den, says Violet
You don’t want to stay home alone.
We can hunt for feathers, says Holly
And listen for the woodpeckers knock.
We can look for blackberries, says Hazel
And gather nuts when they drop.
It’ll be an adventure, says Heather
We’ll find Elves, Trolls, Fairies and Sprites
We can play hide and seek, says Fern
Come quick while it’s still daylight.
We can do some cool bark rubbing, says Ash
In the woods we can de-stress.
I’ll come for a walk in the woods, I say
But I’m NOT making mud pies in this dress!

---

A Bristled Door by Rhianna Levi

You open that latch, on the front of an abruptly bristled door.

Carvings of dream work centred in its long life of history.

Dissecting it would be melting the colour from ?a sturdy flower.

Please do leave it be.

Behind are the cries of a young barn owl, becoming accustomed to the inky darkness that replaces comfort often found in the sun.

They know this very bristled door, creaking sounds can be heard within.

Alterations are not welcomed here.

The door weeps in the form of dark blood, triggered by the very sky.

That substance is its being, disturbed by your uncomfortable presence.

How dare you stand there, with an axe that holds no place.