Photo by Gerda Arendt, courtesy of Wikipedia, because I left my phone at home
The Sunday morning woods are soft
with mud and mulch to hush our steps
and stroking shine of shooting green
Lichen’s sleeves glint crystalline
Moss smears trunks upward, reaches wide,
knits high and low
and beech leaves faired by morning light
smile the colour of my grandson’s hair.
The tenderness connects
like the lane-side hedge stripped bleak
and holding on
But when I touch, within bark’s jagged break
the newly-minted gold’s no sponge
And all around they merge –
resilience, fragility,
the man-made thorns that annexe and defy
caught up in life,
the then and now,
lightly threaded with song.
Quietly he says, “The trees are watching us.”
They’re wondering, I think, how we came to be so lost.