Here you’ll find poetry written by me, illustrated with some of my best nature photos. There are four different categories – Sea to Sky: Time and Eternity, (themes of time and eternity in Nature) Mountains, Wind and Weather, Flowers, and Dawn to Dusk (themes of memory and transience, starting with poems and photos about the morning and ending with the evening.) Some of my personal favourite poems are The Ammonite, from Sea to Sky, Snakehead Fritillary Flowers from Flowers, and Sighting a Tawny Owl in the Garden at Dusk, from Dawn to Dusk.
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Sea to Sky: Time and Eternity
The Sea
Changing as the seconds fly
Ever dappling rippling light
Steady while the years go by
Ever the pale-sand blanching dry
And the pale-winged sea birds’ flight
Changing as the seconds fly
Ever the wave’s retreating sigh
And the fair-foam frothing white
Steady while the years go by
Ever the cawing sea-gulls’s cry
And the sunny wave-top bright
Changing as the seconds fly
Ever the silvery waters lie
At the dropping of the night
Steady while the years go by
Still they lie – close to the sky
In the softly fading light
Changing as the seconds fly
Steady while the years go by.
Slack-Tide
They roll
With silver
With sleeping blue
They roll over
They roll over
They ripple and ripple
So slow
And softly
They sway and sweep
The shadows
Like bloom
On dewy grapes
The ripples
Like dents
In silver – but quieter
They roll
With silver
With sleeping blue
They roll over
They roll over
They ripple and ripple
Between tides the sea
Rests
Forever
At evening Time
Is trapped in the middle of a daisy
A big moon daisy
In the green grass
At evening it all
Looks like the sealing kiss,
That’s given with the words,
‘Forever’
The Woods Outside Hardy’s Cottage
The trees are standing – sharing
Secrets with him – kept safe
In the damp, slow-breathing air
Of the forest. Leaves lie
New leaves – old for the year
They once where new – but sprouted
From old, old substance and bark
The same paradoxical spiral
As time turns round and round
The rowan patterns the grey
Of the low-fallen sky with black
And ferny silhouettes.
Flowers
Snakeshead Fritillary Flowers
Snakesheads in the shadows
Droop their speckles
Hang their heads on thin green
Necks – mournful
In the shadows. Now a
Spear-like leaf
Quivers in the dusk-light
Here the buds are weakly
Green and palish –
Here are dim deep purple.
Delicate scales
Stud each head half-opened –
Shape like diamond.
Careful arch of neck-stalk
Purple tinged
Careful set of the petals
Over grass-net.
Snakesheads in the shadows
Droop their speckles.
Magnolia Flowers
Like soft white leather
As white as a feather
So thick and slow
Like petals of snow
Or face of moon
All bigly strewn
Upon the ground
Without a sound …
Speedwell Flowers
Looking up the dolls eyes
Watery as oceans
Full of tears like daybreak
Skies. Like distant
Hills their fragile petals
Melting blueness
Faintly white-lined like the
Paler sky-edge
Darker blue their veins
Weeping blueness.
The Tulip-Bud
Twisted at the top
So the peak was like a star
It was smooth green and pale
Deepening to the top
Which now was fast un-twisting.
It then was flecked with nightly purple
In cracks up to the top
Between the saving green
The deep, fair silk with depth was showing
And like a beetle’s wing
In light of evening-time
The light on the silk was changing, like stars on the shore-bound wave
It stands just at my door
Within a garden pot
And now the nightly luscious twist is calmly quietly opened
Mountains, Wind and Weather
Melted
Flakes and more flakes
Dropping – dropping
Softly – quickly
Carry on the air –
Dumb air of Winter
One little moment
Twirls them by – so
Large and soft
Indefinable
So many hundreds
Gathered in a sky!
How can it hold them?
Vast as it is!
Melted away now
Melted.
February Rain
Grey light – grey from a gray sky –
Cold as an empty hearth
Down the window crawl wet snakes
Joined by dashing drops.
Millions land in the blink of an eye – and
Have I thought for each?
Just the same as flitting fancies
Each insignificant speck
Joins five more, and grows into a
Drop. Through the pane
Febuary’s first pale crocuses lie flattened.
To Emily Brontë
The cloud unfurls like a storm-blue cape
Of heavy velvet over the view
And vast the steep dark monstrous shape
Of moorland like a sleeping beast
Is distantly flecked with dying snow
The voice of wind is lion unleashed.
The air comes big and cold and stinging
The ground is stumbling under the wind
The fast-expiring snow is clinging
The wind is always passing through
Yet stays to rant and roar and blast
The clouds are bearing down on the view –
The whole –
Is silencing wind and thought to – this –
Eternity.
Distant Hills
They were low white like a sound slow-fading
The plumes on the breast of a bird not softer
In fine, slow cadence hues of time and the distance
Rose and swam and dropped
The peak of Shutlingsloe was pale and silent
A fin in a pearly sea
Where slow foam rolls against
The pearl-bedded horizon
In fine, slow cadence hues of time and the distance
The plumes on the breast of a bird not softer
They were low white like a sound slow-fading.
Windpower
I will meet her up on the trembling heights,
Where the tawny grasses bend their heads
And my coat can feel every tug and die of the wind.
The bare bleak landscape’s set in tremor –
I can see the wind in grass below,
I can see the wind in the clouds above –
That fast are hurrying by, and seem
As if, reaching out, I could touch their changing shapes,
Where the dark of the moorland seems to end
As if t’were the edge of the world.
I can see the wind in the grass below
I can see the wind in the clouds above
But when I reach the highest point
Where glory spins out in a line of hills
At first the closer ring of brown
Where the shadows of the clouds go floating past
And behind them the swelling shapes of blue
That rise and sink like waves, or dreams,
I can feel the wind, as true wind feels,
Not a some mere element, that takes
Your bonnet and flurries your hair
But nature’s strongest force, a solid thing
In your ears and your eyes and your mouth and thus,
In your soul. It’s guarding that highest point
Of the moor, that none may venture near.
Mountains
Still in the silent winter sun they rise
And sink – eternal as the waves they stand
These gem-wrought pictures of a dreamland
Too solid now, to vanish as they came
Though the sky they touch is deeper blue
And the smooth snow softer than I ever knew
Except with close-closed eyes and roaming soul.
Dawn To Dusk
Memories
Sunset
Memories long past will swim in with the sunset
In red and in gold on the rooftops
Drifting as soft as the down on the river
Folding in yellow and dappling in purple
Gentled with time are the clouds like May blossom
Tinged with pink like the cherubs in frescos.
Fading
High, far above in the faded pale fresco
There is the dying of colours of sunset
Wrinkling and withering like fallen may blossom
Cracking like sun-backed slates on the rooftops
Robe of the goddess is faded from purple
Slipping and slipping away is the river.
The River
Slipping, slipping away is the river
Passing the fields and the hills in the fresco
Surface is dappling with yellow and purple
Flowing like gold in the shine of the sunset
Lighting a path to the sky through the rooftops
Over the field where we gathered may blossom.
A Day Years Ago
Falling so softly and white the may blossom
Seconds suspended – they dropped in the river.
Rising above in sunset the rooftops.
Made our way homeward through hills in the fresco
Closed all the shutters ‘gainst light of the sunset
Letting it fall on the rooftop in purple.
Re-living the Sunset
Folding in yellow and dappling in purple
Gentled with being are the clouds like May blossom
Memories now here have swam in with the sunset
Drifting as soft as the down on the river
Tinged with pink like the cherubs in frescos
In red and in gold on the rooftops.
Dawn
Pink-tinged and soft the pale dawn o’re the rooftops
Glints through young leaves with veins of dim purple
Colours as clean and as fresh as may blossom
Brightened and new are the colours in fresco
Years long ago they were painted at sunset
Colours brought back to us now by the river.
Envoi
Rooftops pile high with the softs of may blossom
Red, gold and purple brought back by the river
Fresh in the fresco the colours of sunset.
I chased her
I chased her round the old mill
And down the rolling hill
And up and over the steep green bank –
She flew like dragonfly over the brow
And leaped a fence or two
She stepped as light as the wind blew
Her laughter rang to the sky, and she left
Me to catch my breath while her hair
Shimmered-off into sunlight, and her eyes
Dissolved into bright blue skies.
A Gold-Tit
You made a tiny flit of life
In branches just above me – green
As forest moss your wing – your keen
Black eye was shyly watching me –
And teeny feet were hooked about
The spindly silvery twig. With doubt
Your trembling beak explored a leaf
And lightly let it fall upon my foot.
Your careful markings smudged like soot
And on your head a brushstroke blaze
Of yellow-gold. Your tiny tail
Is gone among the catkins pale.
The Woods in March
The trees in silent sober beauty stood
Pale tree-trunks rising smooth from dead
And dying bracken – tawny gold – the wood
Half-bathed with moist sunshine. “See, tread
With softness lest the slightest stir you make
And all the golden sleeping woodland wake
Let not one fallen brown leaf rustle – break
No twig – be quiet and kick no stone.” Said she
So with most scrupulous care went we
And passed around a slender smooth-barked tree.
We saw two kinds of catkins lately out
The pussy willow, grey with her soft, soft touch
And hazel too before we turned about –
And they were cleanly yellow green. So much
Of beauty in that little wood
Wearing Springtime’s hood
Were she and I stood.
All things that dance
There’s the dance of the clouds as they cross the sky
Like downy hurrying dreams on high –
And the dance of the golden daffodil
All the bare green hills with light to fill
And the dance of the poplars that sway in wind
And the leaves that in little flurries spin
And the dance of the swan as the day draws late
And the bird like a speck in the sky with his mate
And the dance of the light and the shade on the lane
And the dance of the drops on the windowpane
And the dance of the waves in their sparkling glee
And the dance of my heart these things to see.
Sighting a Tawny Owl in the garden at dusk
The dark lawn swayed
Like a slow timed pendulum
Beneath the strung air
That whistled past the swing
The green leaves glowed
In fresh shadowy silence
Around the grey branches
And something
Took flight
With heavy laden sweeps
And swayed into a glide
In perfect, noiseless, hurry
Swung with me,
Folded wings and sat
And gazed with eyes like holes
In emptiness – then swept
Into shadows.
Let me have it
Let me have it, that something I never can reach –
Let me dance in those poppies that scatter the sky!
Let me drift on those wisps of velvety peach!
Let me slide down those beams of dusty sunshine!
Let me sit on that pale arching curve of a moon!
Let me gather those stars, behind prickling pine –
And wear them on a necklace that forever I’ll keep.
And, for a pendant, what most I should like,
Is one of those bright embers, when the fire falls asleep.
Why always so high, so far out of reach –
You taunting great velvety dome of a sky?
If closer you came, I might crawl through that breach,
That fiery crack in the pearly enamel
When the hot sun sinks over a silvery sea.
And what should I find, pass’d through that red channel?
Might I slip out of the atmosphere, and down
The cold milky-way go soaring at ease?
Let me go with the wind to rustle the tree’s green gown.
Why, Nature, so allusive, so flitting and shy,
Like the soft butterfly, who flees as I near?
On some big water-lily pad let me lie
And down the quiet stream go a-floating far.
Make the clouds my kingdom, hedge, tree and all,
With a palace, all shimmering with light from the stars.
On the crest of a wave let me ride away!
Forever let me lie on a bed of rich moss,
Let me dress in the sky at the dawn of the day,
And at Nature’s bosom I ever will stay.
More Photos

Spring Cups

Fairy’s Ball Gowns
Dew

Dusk Silvered (This photo always reminds me of Tennyson’s Oenone –
‘Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark,
And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine …
… one silvery cloud
Had lost his way between the piney sides …
My tall dark pines, that plumed the craggy ledge
High over the blue gorge …’)
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Beautiful poetry. The tree photos were stunning!
I’m so glad you liked them! And thanks for the follow 🙂
🙂