October Blog 2018
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It is amazing the things that once witnessed stay in our heads, worrying at the edges, until we are forced to write something. End September it was watching gannets from the Bass Rock dive for fish. Then, later in the same week I found an old tree friend had succumbed to storm Ali. In tree lore they call the beech 'Mother of the Woods' and it was believed that slivers of beech wood were talismans to improve creativity.
Poem - Beeched
They say the wind took her,
this ancient Beech tree, crashed to earth.
Her thick bark of elephant-grey,
lightning scarred, and carved with cupid hearts.
Her bleached bones spalted by autumn’s flame,
lie broken, still as severed tusks.
Woodpigeons fret and flutter by the corpse,
their ancestral home ~ storm scattered,
their sky ~ too far away.
They roost amongst her dying leaves
Wing to feathery wing
guarding her final resting place.
A lone dog-walker shuffles by wheezing,
rests a hand on her burr-cankered trunk,
his crippled fingers read her tumours like Braille,
Puggled? he asks, Hud enough?
He nods his head and smiles,
teeth yellow as aged-ivory,
Ken how ye feel
That’s the way it is.
