Attitude Check

Climb down off your white horse

And sit in the shade of the trees

To drink from your canteen

A taste of humility

Toys at the Base of an Oak Tree

“‘We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?’ asked Piglet.
‘Even longer,’ Pooh answered.”

  • A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

You find them at the base of a tree sometimes:

A pewter knight or a plastic Robin Hood

Or a marble lost in the long-ago

Turned up among the weeds by shifting roots

In the leafy silences of summer a little boy

Practiced the arts of magic and manliness

With Robin Hood and the pewter knight searching for a jewel

To present to their Lady Marian

When he was a little older the boy walked to town

To the bus station, and off to a distant war

A jewel sacrificed to the blasphemy of the State

You’ll find his name at the base of a stone

But the pewter knight and the plastic Robin Hood

And beautiful Lady Marian still wait for him

These Are Not the Leaves of Autumn

 These are not the leaves of autumn, these husks;

They died so young, fallen from the summer-burnt oaks

Leaving the lingering limbs barren of green

A struggle of woody cells against the drought

They wear no celebratory colors

Nothing of red or gold to catch the sun

For they died of thirst in their lost-green youth

Never reaching the October they had earned

These are not the leaves of autumn, oh, no

But only shells dry-rattling in the wind

Even the Oak Trees are Dying 

“Wildfire… evacuation of nearby residences under way”

  • news bulletin

Poor drought-dead leaves in mockery of autumn

Wind-rustle across the lawn as the dried husks they are

Rattling like withered exoskeletons along the dust

Or The Ancient Mariner’s dead sailors upon the deck

Like Children Dancing

Like children dancing, leaves form up in rows

Then skitter across each corner and street

As shoals in rolling ranks overflowing other ranks

Or little tornadoes laughing through circles and swirls

Like children celebrating their youth and strength

Leaves tumble and run before the shifting wind

‘Way up into the air and back to earth

In happy games of catch-me-if-you-can

Like children in the afternoon, just out of school

Autumn leaves joyfully mock every rule

A Good Enough Leaf-Time

No more the withered summer-browns of death

Crumbling and sere upon the dry and crackling ground

Beneath a Rime of the Ancient Mariner sky—

Leaves in autumn colours are falling now

Pale greens, poor yellows, weak reds, but good enough

To decorate this time of early frosts

With appropriate merriment, good enough

To rake into playtime heaps for children and dogs

These modest scenes will attract no peepers this year

But I will send you a snap—it’s good enough!

The Aeolian Harp and the Aeolian Tree-Stump

Every tree is an Aeolian harp

Singing the Daily Office of the wind

Not often the night’s Matins and Lauds so much 

But with the breezy dawn the service of Prime

And I know an Aeolian tree-stump too

Of deeper voices through its mysterious hollows

Wind whispering into the damp, dark earth 

Then booming out into the air again

Every tree is an Aeolian harp

But a tree-stump can be musical too