Despite, and Still (for J.)

 

I said to the trees

                                                --the birch, the pear, the maple--

"How can my heart be anything but an empty cup

Now that your leaves have all fallen

   like the handsome musician from Heaven

   or funeral cards from the hands of old women?"

"Look at you," replied the trees. 

                                                                                     "We have spun you

from the loom of our beauty and the cruelty of our silence.

Just as you did in summer, you stand looking

   as Jason did in the grove, when our fleece was 

   golden in autumn and stolen away in November."

I stayed for a long time,

                                                               so long that the snow 

became hands on my shoulders like a mother's or a healer's.

The sky is as gray as cold water, the trees' bones

  stand right to left like verses across a page,

   antique, dignified, turned to benevolent mentors.

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for Dverse Poetics "Despite & Still" where Dora is hosting.

Music: Fleetwood Mac Bare Trees

And Judith Durham All My Trials

The Ash Tree In Winter

 

In winter, the ash is a liar like me

no different in the copse from its fellows

a beauty in death for its filigree.

Its costume of stillness and symmetry

in the fullness of summer turned yellow.

In winter the ash is a liar like me.

It looks to the wind to lend piquancy

by enlivening motionless sorrow

a beauty in death for its filigree.

The green of the ash has invisibly

diminished as the borer could tell you.

In winter, the ash is a liar like me.

Quick heart gone dry inside of the ash tree

A dancer swaying beneath the gallows

a beauty in death for its filigree.

A carve that kills leaves it fine and fancy

from just the proper angle, heaven knows.

In winter the ash is a liar like me,

a beauty in death for its filigree.

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for Dverse Poetics: Pounding the Pantemeter, hosted by Ingrid.