Mountain snows thawing
Swollen
rivers causing
Nature
dormant awakening
New
life into breathing
Sprouting
shoots arriving
Early
cherry blossoming
Annual
event occurring
Life’s
cycle repeating
Springtime
refreshing
Simple
senses pleasing
God’s
design believing
Caught in that first instant,
That first take from a
distance
There appeared from the
Woodlands edge
A kind of low misty
apparition
Almost like a cloud of
drifting smoke
Emerging from the tree
line
Of course, when I got closer,
I realized
It was just the flowering
Hawthorn
The weather types keep on issuing they’re warning
And
they keep bleating on about global warming
They
even know the temperature to within a degree
In
the summer of two thousand and ninety-three
We
can expect out summers to be long and very hot
And
our winters will be mild and damp like as not
Why
should we believe that a heatwave will ignite?
When
they can’t even get the two-day forecast right
Perched on the Apple boughs
The Finches sing a song to please
A song carried on the air, with
The scent of blossom on the breeze
Upon
the wooded hill
The
forest sentinel stood
Made
from wind falls
Wooden
scraps and ullage
Skillfully
fashioned
To
become, complete with binoculars
The
birdwatcher
But
all was not as it seemed
For
the sentinel
Destined
to forever study
What
fell before his gaze
Every
autumn
Turned
his attention upon
His
favorite birch tree
Who
when the autumn wind blew
Began
to shed her leafy canopy
All
the year round he studied
In
detail her fully covered form
But
in the autumn, he could
Revel
in her nakedness
The
sentinel spoke to himself
“Oh,
I’m getting a woody”
And
with that his sap began to rise
“Oh
no too soon, too soon”
Then
all too suddenly it was over
So,
upon the wooded hill
The
frustrated forest sentinel stood
Staring
through his binoculars
And
telling himself
“There’s
always next year”
Their whole life
Is
etched into the bark
The
trunks wear their story
To
be read with the eye
Or
touched like brail
Cracked
and weathered
Like
the face of an old mariner
Showing
what was
And
what is still
It
protects like a pachyderm’s hide
Its
the first line of defence
Against
any aggressor
Then
when the tree falls
It’s
the last to die
Nature fills the world with sound
An
infinite orchestra free to air
The
wind can caress the trees
Rustling
the leaves gently
Or
make them beat like a tambourine
It
can whistle through canyons
And
talk in the high grass
Then
add the percussion of distant thunder
Water
tumbling down stream
Waves
crashing on a rocky shore
And
rain falling on a leafy canopy
Then
a chorus made up from every creature
The
bird world, myriad in variety
From
hummingbird to nightingale
To
rooks and crows
And
then the insects from
Rhythmic
crickets to buzzing bees
And
animal kind contribute
Howling
hounds, roaring big cats
Trumpeting
elephants and squeaking mice
And
when the elements really get going
They
can bring the house down
