Linda Studley

Can't Put the Pen Down…

Archive for the tag “trees”

10 Sep 2017

Ashes

I forgot to post this poem – it was written on the 6th as we were travelling through the Cariboo. The haze made the background seem two dimensional.

 

ashes-smallTreed mountains, layered in smoke,
recede into the haze; cut-out silhouettes; mere jagged,
misty dreams of the real terrain beneath.
And in the foreground emerge the trees, clearer now,
more defined, more detail in their sweeping boughs and
pendant moss; skeletons of their ancestors propped up
in their arms, standing witness.
There is a sense of waiting in the air
and a taste of ashes on the tongue.

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24 Oct 2015

Tree Dreams

Trees dream of summer too.
Of days filled with the laughter of tender leaves
and singing rain.
Alive with the heart beat of hummingbird wings
and the mingled perfume of warm earth,
wild flowers, and ripe berries.
Stripped and slumbering the trees bide, knowing
one day the sun will rise with new warmth,
the wind will have dulled his teeth
from gnawing on ice and snow,
and water will chuckle once more.
But for now, the trees sleep on,
visions of summer yet to be
safe within their rings.

#102

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15 Oct 2015
2 Comments

Morning Promise

When the leaves are gone
twined arms and tangled fingers
sieve the sunrise light

into stained glass shards
that rise, fade, and seep into
a morning promise.

#93

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31 Aug 2015

Hooray

The sun is shining,
trees are applauding the wind,
life loves an encore.

#48

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26 Aug 2015

Fertile Words

Take a pencil, made of wood,
and paper made from trees.
Jot your words, draw your lines,
and make a moment freeze.

How long can you hold it there?
Until it rots and then
it feeds the forest floor
and becomes a tree again.

 

#43

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09 Aug 2015

A New Poem for the Trees (Han Shan Conundrum – Part 2)

I wrote a poem to save trees.
A Han Shan poem to dangle like a leaf
in an endangered forest.

The forest was saved.
The poem removed.
And now you want to rehang it but don’t you see?
it would be like trying to re-attach a fallen leaf to a tree.
The life force disconnected, it could only be a sad thing,
a dead trophy.

Instead we should be writing a new poem,
a poem to the trees
wishing them well.
A poem to all the other poets whose words stayed the bulldozer.
A poem to the people, all the people,
who will one day walk the forest and think,
“How wonderful.
This is the forest that poets helped save.”

 

#26

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29 Jul 2015

Let Go the Wind

Leaves applaud the wind
in sudden outbursts of joy.
Wild adulation.

Harder to impress,
bough and bole just nod and sway.
Grudging approval.

But roots slumber on,
unmoved by windy speeches.
Blithely unaware.

And I let it go.
I take it into my soul
Then I let it go.

 

#15

 

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26 Jul 2015

Hidden Miracles

I am not a flatlander.
Honest open fields give me vertigo
and a feeling of eyes looking over my shoulder.
Drunken grasshoppers, launch
haphazardly and land on their heads,
lurching towards some kind of freedom.

I want trees, lots of trees
and the communities within
their branches, the worlds beneath
their boughs, and chickadees so close
you can make eye contact.

I want horizons that swell and surprise,
and hint of mysteries and possibilities tangled
in every game trail and sudden stream.
I don’t want to know every nook
and cranny of my landscape.
I want hidden miracles.
 

#12

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22 Jul 2015

A Study in Green

I study the forest outside my window,
my eyes tracing faces in the tangled branches,
sailing ships swaying in the outstretched arms,
limbed antlers, twig webs, stump mountains,
and the graceful ellipses, the watching eyes,
as the forest studies me back.

#8

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18 Jul 2015

Weeping on Willows

Aspens are weeping.
Glazing the yellow willows
with their sticky tears.

 

#4

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