Category: Natural World Poems

The woods in winter:
The peeling bark, the skeletal trees.
The blood-red berries blinking bright,
The tracks of squirrels in the snow,
The sere brown leaves of beech and oak
So loth to let go.

You can see
The sun through arboreal traceries,
And flocks of twittering birds
Flutter and flit from tree to tree,
Then rise in a soaring cloud
And swim away.

The woods in winter
Are not dense or menacing or dark
As are the woods in summer.
You see what roots and rocks
To step around, what handholds
Will support you.

It is a joy
To walk the woods in winter,
To breathe the crisp cold air,
To clear the cluttered mind
To calm the troubled soul.
My place is there.

STRAWBERRY BEGONIA

It has such an alien look

My curly-edged-velvet-leaved plant

That hangs on a window hook.

Overnight it has shot up wands

Where perch tiny white dragonflies

Long-tailed, short-winged, each

With a round yellow body.  Meanwhile

Under the pot hang long delicate

Red threads bearing widely spaced

Baby versions of the mother leaves.

The flowers are greeting the spring

Equinox or enacting a resurrection

Or else they are beckoning bees.

I call it my mystery plant.

SONNET TO THE FIRST SNOWFALL

Behind her wrinkled monkey face

An apple-cheeked lass still smiles

At the wintry woods as a welcoming place:

The trails ahead beckon for miles.

But the creaky old back refuses to bend

To strap on the cross-country skis.

It’s just as well.  Two turkeys send

Their calls from neighboring pine trees.

The winterberries wink red in the snow.

Ahead are the tracks of a snowshoe hare.

Her winter boots will suffice, she knows,

For a brief but rewarding excursion there

Where the red squirrels’ litter will be found

And many other treasures abound.

NEIGHBORS

The cardinal in my Katsura tree

Stares at my blue spruce

From which a house finch emerges

To chase him up to the roof.

As I walk to the workout gym

A squirrel crosses my path.

I’m of no concern to him,

An acorn within his grasp.

The robin gives me a look

And continues with his quest

Hoping to trace the route

Of earthworms under the grass

As on a nearby birch

A woodpecker hammers his search.

AT THE GOAT FARM

It’s mud time in March and I am on my way

To pick up milk at the Jesta Farm

Where mother goats are kidding every day.

There’s mud on the farmyard driveway

Covered with hay.  The chickens prance

To meet me, clucking their querulous queries.

I warn them not to take a chance

On foraging under my car wheels.

Pungent odors assail my nose

As I slide open the door to the warm barn

And hear the bleats of nanny goats

Who fear their kids have come to harm.

I take my milk and head for home

Where ice no longer coats our pond.

TREES

In years past I’ve laid my hand

On many a smooth-barked tree

On many a mountain trail

And looked up to shallow-rooted

Pines standing stately and tall.

Like Rob Frost I’ve envied the birches

That bend under burdens of snow

In graceful compliant submission,

Then rise up again in the spring

To shake their new leaves in the sun.

Now it’s limb-lopped but upright

Old skeletal trees that I notice

On country roads or in paintings,

Woodpecker raddled and ravaged

By age that I chiefly admire.