Skip to main content

Ode to a Tilted Tree

Your body tilted
Your leaves wilted
Your energy royal,
your friendship loyal.
But you are discouraged and tired
of being sparingly admired.

Your head bends steadily towards the water,
The by-standers do not seem to bother
to listen to the stories you can reveal,
Allowing the history and your presence to heal
the wounds one carries in her mind;
You seem exhausted yet humbly kind.

Welcoming strangers with a warm embrace
Your wrinkled skin and a weather-beaten face
contrasts with a jovial and mischievous grace
of the young branches so naive but stable…
How much you must be grateful -
for these smooth slender arms,
With your inner protection nothing harms.

 

Anon.

Poetry Theme(s):

Currently Popular Poems:

Forever Searching

Search the walls Scan the corridors Express the highs Scribble the lows Writing explores The state of my mind.   Judith  
View Poem »

River Stour Haiku

Wandering the bend, Bending around the wonder Meander reveals. Freda
View Poem »

Bones on the Shore

We walk the shoreline down in that dark dip at year’s end, while life’s still slumbering. The beach is a graveyard. We clamber, beneath ominous skies, through cathedrals of bones. Beached giants, prone on the sand, gaunt skeletons, arms uplifted, feet still reluctant to leave. In the lifetime of my children, these dinosaurs, these mighty oaks have fallen, their forms sculpted by time and weather, yet even in death they hold such power. They lie, steadfast as ever, awesome, majestic, statuesque, garlanded with gifts from the river: soft green fronds, little crabs, bladder wrack decorating their fingers. For centuries they stood strong, hearing the river’s song: ebb, flow, winter, spring, tide and moon rising, falling, curlew calling, calling. We will walk the shorelines at that bright time of new beginnings, now we are awakening. Jan Armstrong Photo by Daniel Lincoln via Unsplash
View Poem »

Dunwich Heath Cliff

Beachen sand, coastal gravel Heave and spew with every wave Are fixed above my head Banks of sand, clots of gravel Two million-years adrift Are rolling at my feet Same old, same old Dunwich Cliff, Dunwich Beach: The poetry of sediment remains Tim
View Poem »

Hidden Behind Plastic Shields and Masks

Hidden behind plastic shields and masks they smile at me but only with their eyes, there is love in each iris, lash and wrinkle wink. Who silently steps in the space between being neither here nor there? He watches her laboured breathing as tubes that had filled her lungs with life are now removed. I’ve breathed in and out without a thought for sixty-seven years but not now, I needed a machine but not anymore. Alone now and strangely calm - this is how it ends, the final cut. He looked at her gravely and slides beside her under covers of night. I feel his presence as a chill - wintery, I’m not dressed for this journey. A lantern held aloft in the forest of firs underfoot pine needles and snow the smell of resin and the crack of footfalls on icy ground. He smiles and I find myself smiling back a new doctor without a mask, weary eyes that have seen this all before and see too much I am weightless as a white feather drifting skyward. Ian Hartley
View Poem »

A Way of Life

It’s become a way of life this summer, the canvas bag slung over my shoulder hoping not to need it hoping the sky will stay blue long enough to get a walk by the sea. It’s become a way of life this summer, wearing my green jeans, wearing a matching sweatshirt to keep the wind out, wearing green wherever possible to match my green cagoule in case I need it. It’s becoming a way of life, it’s true, this life of uncertainty which nags at the back of your mind and keeps you constantly looking up the weather on your phone. It’s a way of life, this anxiety which sends me scurrying for help when it mushrooms out of control in the middle of the night. Julia
View Poem »

Cardamine Pratensis

after Laurie Lee, ‘Milkmaid’ ‘Tender cress and cuckoo-flower: And curly-haired, fair-headed maids, Sweet was the sound of their singing’* A pretty name, the ‘cuckoo flower’, just one of many guises: ‘Our Lady’s smock’, or ‘fairy flowers’ that come in varied sizes. The flower, they said, could bring bad luck so rarely picked for remedies; but sometimes risked to use like cress to pepper up the lunchtime cheese. The ‘May flower’ tells us when it blooms while ‘coco plants’ confuse the mind, the rustic ‘milkmaid’ seems to show an image that is less refined. The name suggests a dainty wench, just like the flower, a pleasant sight, who tends the herd in shaded barn in frilly smock, all dazzling white. They say the blooming coincides with cuckoo’s call; they may be right but milkmaids conjure up the mood of summer’s idyll at its height. Lee’s marigolds and buttercups and ‘brimming harvest of their day’ reveal to us a bygone time, remind us of those country ways. Julia Duke *From a 15th or 16...
View Poem »

Alive

All of a sudden, I am awake and the sea is licking round my feet. A wall of muddy grey fringed with white assaults my mind and spirit jostling me from sleep. A wave has broken. I am alive. Felix stands on the sea’s edge; hardly a split second’s pause before he is stumbling forward, fearless into the waves, embracing the ocean, saying yes, yes I will, yes to his new friend. I have been sleep-walking, a spectator, unable to grasp this new role, the forgotten skills of grand-parenting lost in the wreckage that is Covid. Standing bemused in playgrounds, waiting for the light to dawn. Suddenly, I am woken by the waves, remembering what life consists of, remembering how to say yes, remembering how to say no, remembering what makes me who I am. Child of the sea. Julia Duke
View Poem »

Who Is Saving The World?

The recycler, bicycler, bio-masser and solar paneller, the sustainable developer, the charity worker, the medics (sans frontieres?), fundraisers and carers, givers and listeners, growers of organics, designers of biodegradables. Genetic engineers? Surgeons and researchers, forgivers and forgetters, Billy the bug hunter, Immy the mathematician, Troy the paratriathelete, Wendy the wigwam maker. The ones who go last, the ones who smile, the ones who don’t want to argue about it, the ones who give up their seat, the ones who calm a storm, the ones who cook up a feast, the ones who sing praises, the ones who shine, Auntie Gwen and Malala…… ….and I drink water from a glass bottle. Sue Foster Image by Fernando via Unsplash .
View Poem »

Solitude of Pines

With a frail And uncertain future Breathing in rhythmical pines Calms my thoughts. Solitude I seek Within the forest Amorphous blankets of snow Covering crestfallen waves. Spirited wind Melancholy whispers A tear falls Past traumas relived. Ephemeral bird calls Wispy clouds and frost Revitalises lost energies I no longer feel lost.     Matthew  
View Poem »