THERE IS A PATH
There is a path goes right across a field,
high across the middle of a nothing sort of field,
a field of mostly grass.
I am here today,
buffeted, hearing
nothing but the blowing
till I turn away,
and hear the quiet thunder of a distant aeroplane
drifting into grey,
while all the time and all around
busy songs of birds
rise from the ground.
I can see behind
two school towers,
red, black, over green trees;
ahead, a church’s only tower,
closer,
nestled in by trees bringing out the grey;
right, the downs going blue;
left, a line of brown houses,
sounds of building too.
Under me, mud gives to the push of a thumb,
leaving an impression? Yes,
but not where I press,
on the thumb itself, the mud
showing up contours of the skin,
the incline made by a pencil pressing in,
while all the time and all around
busy songs of birds
rise from the ground.
EVENING BIRCH
The top half
is in a different world,
warm with sun.
Wind grows ice,
as leaf by leaf the light
disappears
always up.
As high-leaf branches wave
wailingly,
suddenly
that world is gone, leaving
all same green.
Centre top,
still standing as it sways
moved by winds,
hurricanes,
a branch is tree itself
young with leaf,
separate
yet one with this tree’s trunk
unmoving.
FROM THE COMMON ROOM
There are the fields behind,
one with summer hay,
over which a pair of crows
curve a flight away.
Between the silences
here within a school
teachers can be heard at work
voicing out a rule.
Behind a class’s backs
posters on a wall
show events I cannot see
nor would quite recall.
But over by the hedge,
just before the hay,
stands a low-leafed apple-tree
waving every way.
There are the fields behind,
one with summer hay,
on whose tops a pair of crows
lightly walk today,
until I realise
how my eyes were wrong,
how the stalks
are only inches long.
There is a boy below
sitting in a class
noticing his hand in sun
high beside the glass.
Another waits outside
quiet where he stands
slowly fiddling with a pen
big within his hands.
But over by the hedge,
just before the hay,
stands a low-leafed apple-tree
waving every way,
and on the farther edge
green below the sky
many trees together
seem still before the eye.
DARK BEFORE DAWN
Unasleep,
unlikely to sleep,
with both eyes shut,
with nothing to see,
still look to find
whatever there is
behind my lids –
see nothing,
nothing,
until I focus in on something very far,
small,
dark,
sending out flames –
my own burning star.
SOMEONE HAS CARVED
Someone has carved a seat out of wood,
where a copse has been cut back,
almost like a kind of joke,
someone showing that he could.
Come in close, you will see
how the shape of it is cut
out of what
remains of a tree.
Straight back, arm rests,
it almost is an armchair,
backing onto where
a white sun sets.
Would you sit in it?
There’s fungus,
and worse,
the seat will make you wet,
give nothing in return.
I do,
though
not sitting down
totally,
finding it
a snug fit
tailor-made for me.
As a chill
rises within,
I find I’m shown
sunlight still
touching tops of trees;
higher,
together,
all the sky’s
clouds going right
over light blue;
below,
a wall clean and white;
above,
under-wings of birds, a pair
up in the air,
trying to move.
I watch them battling,
let the seat
take my weight,
hear a trilling
like water spilling,
and what I see
is a dead tree
singing.
olivermarlowpoetry.com 