A Great Spotted Woodpecker
How very lucky I am indeed
to spy your woodland bouncing course
as you grasp at vertical tree bark
and entice me into a sudden
quick-footed game of hide-and-seek.
Peekaboo-ing at me from around
the other side of the tree trunk.
Beautifully Regal, Novel and Majestic
in your mask and cloak of ebony
and ermine with a tantalizing
touch of red to add a splash of magic.
Oh, a Springtime day has never
been wasted if I get to see you
in person or to hear you a-drumming.
Ah, it warms the cockles of my heart
to see your lovely colours a-shining.
Tawny Owl
Something instinctively pulls me sideways
from the gentle afternoon pathway,
through the bushes and thick undergrowth,
inwards to the heart of The Forest of Dean.
After awhile the intricate entanglement
holding my focus captive around my legs
stops fighting and gives way
and there before me lays a silent and dark
green Cavern of trees, massive and majestic.
The many trunks coming down uniformly
in sentinel columns to a mossy ground,
a veritable patchwork of shades and hues.
there is a strange almost spectral feel
created by the scattered bursts of sunlight
shooting through the living canopy above
to the ground like Heavenly arrow shots.
Just off centre heaps an old greying, broken,
twisted tree whom holds my gaze magically.
I step forward towards it and a stick snaps
beneath my trespassing boot, the sound of it
rises up and echoes across before me.
A Tawny Owl falls silent from the old tree,
circles up in a brown and white flecked
arc and beats slowly off in that direction.
As I watch I feel an ancient stirring within me,
I have learnt something profound and magical
here today, a seed has been birthed within me.
Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo-porcelain bridesmades instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet. You can read his poems and stories here: http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/
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