How the sea appeared to the stones

All stones hum,
Some deeper than others
Sunk deep in the earth under us.

We keep an ear to the earth
And listen to the stones,
Cradling them with our roots.

The stones have stories too;
Stories of seas,
Of seas leaving

And leaving land, seas
Like windy grasses
Waving in fallow fields

Like big skies
Lying under big skies
Above.

The leaves are reaching up
Into big sky above.
We want to know

Tell us, tell us all you see,
Is there, anywhere
Big sky below?

from An ear to the earth II

Of what we vines are most afraid

Tendrils twisting up limbless trees,
Our season's growth holds on to
Our dead, expressionless companions,
Rootless, yet sturdy,
Pushed deep into the soil.
Who knows of their silent aspirations
To spread a branch, some leaves?
Carrying our fruiting lineage
We emulate their staked-out intervals
And cling for support, since we need you.

Do you look upon us with envy?
Our leaves cast great shadows
That our companions could only dream of.
Reaching out along a trail
We've spent years mastering.
Contorting our trunks into shapes
That are not straight or rigid
But as if to say, ''We're alive, we're alive
Admire the fruits of our labour''

It consumes all our strength
To divulge this wisdom
And each year we are cut back to conserve our energy.
Each year is our new beginning
Until one year we shall be cut back completely
When we are no longer yielding
And become, like you,
Unyielding.


from An ear to the earth, V

A tree contemplates its own mortality

It was like,
How shall I put it?
Like the first lightening strike
Or the moment a storm cloud bursts?
No, much closer.

The first swing of an axe
Sending a convulsion,
An electrical charge
Through the forest floor
Through every fibre.

How can you prepare
For the as yet unknown?

And when a light space opened up
Touching the forest floor,
Where the shady things grow,
I knew then
That there would be no rest.

An ear to the earth, X


.

How the leaves learnt to speak

It is the wind
that gives us

our voices we
chattering leaves

are full of whispers
sighing , breathing

leaving the forest
ripe with rumours

as we collectively
exhale.



An ear to the earth
IX

The secret in the soil

What goes on up there above in the light
space we have no names for or know
what shape such seeds take on where
our skin is exposed to all the elements
suffering every condition yet we give
seeds life but are not life itself me we
us soil and the seeds that seek shelter
all manner of things have grown here
in the dark in the turmoil of our acidity
and alkali seeds in stony layers
between which roots thrust their searching tips
prising and worming deep into our soul
and where only the drip
drip of liquids
penetrates deeper and deeper still.

.

An ear to the earth, VIII

The conspiracy of ivy

By the field's edge we grew
Long time undisturbed
Edged by ploughing
Observed the breaking clods
Long time looked over
A distant edged distance
Watched the sowing
The reaping
The ploughing
The sowing
And all the time
About our trunks
Grew a deeper green
Than we'd ever seen
Creeping up
Stealthily,
Slowly,
Slowly,
Suffocating.

.

Poem VII from the collection
An ear to the earth

.

A butterfly alights on a leaf

Why do you copy in our dead colours
When we struggle so hard for life
Even last year's leaves still wave and rattle
Yes, even we saw the winter through.

How easily you melt into our surroundings
Sunning your wings just long enough
To alert us here of the dangers there...
Just the thought of it now makes us all shudder.

from An ear to the earth
VI