A forest of nature poetry...

Nature-lovers, and those preferring more thoughtful poetry, here's a break from today's frivolous Hallowe'en fun with some solider stuff on my Nature page (added below the rest).

As you'll see, I love trees! Everything about them makes me want to write about them, especially the effects of wind and sun on their movements, sounds, lights and colours.

But there's something beyond all that to be found in trees too. To me they make statements: their tall, splendid dignity speaks:  their presence can be felt across a field, watching, contemplating, bearing the highs and lows of the world on their arm-like branches.  Some offer solace, peace and serenity, wisdom even, drawn from decades, perhaps centuries, of watching over us all. But they they have their melancholy sides too, of course, especially come late autumn, when we watch them shake their sad, fraying heads as they shrink helplessly into those pitiful, forlorn old creatures, though even then, some will remain defiant, bracing ice and snow with tight-knotted muscles, or simply melting the chill with their grace. Ah, but there are those, too, whose winter stance we find less reassuring: those, like my 'Wicked Winter Tree', that loom suddenly up out of the mist, bearing down with grabbing arms and clawing fingers as we hurry home in the half-light. 

But if trees actually were conscious beings, they would find us the creepy ones, with our axes and chainsaws and our ever vaster and faster clearance strategies, not to mention our hydraulic drills and bulldozers, our tarmac and concrete and bricks and mortar and traffic and fumes and... 

Perhaps that's why I want so much to celebrate trees.