Best Larch Poems
"I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;"
. . .
"Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before."
--- from The Tree, by Ezra Pound
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Slender, singular, filamentous fir,
Yellowing larch -- these trees
Do not speak but seem to sleep,
Sheltering skinny sheep
Handily herded -- full-fleeced
In lanolin-laden wool.
Sheep do not sleep much.
They speak their protest --
(Such ineffective baas) --
To cloning and to closeness.
All, doubles of the ovine others,
Crowded among brothers,
Cowering under silent wood:
Dissimilar dark fir;
Lone, yellowing
Larch.
Thomas was a tosser of the caber
Loved to practice in front of his neighbour
Oh boy how she would blush
When he wiggled his tush
For his caber glowed like a lightsabre
Just a fun write about the Scottish athletic event of tossing the caber which is practiced at the Scottish Highland Games. The caber is usually made of larch wood - it is 5.94 tall and weighs 79kg
16th June 2015
Yosemite’s Ephemeral Autumn Falls
Bald giants of swift water smoothed pale granite
Mark deep clefts for tumbling summer snowmelt
Rush released from frozen streams once frostbit
Silver swells - Ribbon Falls in pure ice melt -
Ephemeral streams slowed beneath Orion’s belt.
Thin tulle mist from autumn’s gossamer Bridal Veil
Flutters, bathing stony arms embrace of Royal Arch,
Quaking Aspen in Alder Creek covers Misty Trails
Witness near the Staircase wildflowers parched -
Golden leaves on steep slopes from the western larch.
Sheer barren faces only seep crystalline tears
As rivers flow to shallow autumnal rivulets
And Fire Falls wait for wintery floods to reappear
When somber quartz welcomes new Cascades reset
Catching torrent tides, flashing in a fiery sunset.
Wild Cat eyes the Sentinel in thirsting, dried up rills
That thinly coat plutonic rock in a glacial train
Only a trickle floats lazy scarlet sent over these hills
No tumbling drops tickle Waterwheel to turn with rain
While Snow Creek laments in narrow runnels refrain.
No gushing rivers plunge in roaring thunder veils
Nor scramble down Yosemite’s plainly marbled face
Scant silvered dews spill over on Nevada’s trails
For soon the breathing winter storms many falls erase
Till joyful spring redeems autumn in this magic place.
A tribute to the magnificence of Yosemite during autumn.
The black panther sensed its prey.
The hunt began as a graceful gazelle
Foolishly strayed in the moonless night.
With powerful strides soon, the powerful panther
Gained on its intended tasty prize.
It smelled the blood almost too soon,
The wound inflicted on its lacerated neck.
Soon, it would die…..
I woke.
Sweat covered my whole body and
I trembled with the chilly night air.
There was nothing to do but
Take a quick shower and change,
Wash my blood-stained teeth,
Throw my dirty night tracksuit
Into the washing machine and
Go back to sleep. A futile hope.
The bed sheet was wet with sweat.
I had to use the other side of the bed,
The part where my wife used to sleep.
A sudden cosy warmth girdled me entirely,
I smelled the musk of the odiferous larch,
I heard the swish swash of waves of a lake
And for the first time in many nights
I slept without being absorbed of ugly dreams.
Fiction
For all daylight hours of this magical season
I lingered along the edge of a lake and
Was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves
And all sounds are as crisp as autumn air.
The leaves fall and the wind blows
Pastures smell with uneaten placentas
The lovely autumn days, the new mown hay.
Pigeon in the morn, cuckoo in the noon,
Corncrake in the eve, the wasps in the jam
The smell of gorse, the look of the gorse.
Apples falling, children walking on leaves
Larch turning brown, the chestnuts falling
Winds howling, the sea breaking over the pier
The milkweed pods are breaking and
Bits of silken down floating on breeze
I stood for a while under autumn tree
The cripple wind moved among the leaves
Voices of the insects, deer by the fence
This autumn dusk has brought me tears.
+++
January 4, 2015
Form; Free Verse
Third Place win
Kananaskis is
four-fifths a line of haiku
Kananaskis is
With spring’s sudden warmth
serial avalanches thunder
one triggers the next
Winter’s snow melting
laughing, leaping, running to
valley far below
Green slopes banded red
dying lodgepole pine, memories
of last year’s Chinook
Golden larch quivers
as the first storm of winter
passes close tonight
As a boy, I came
to know this quiet valley
father's special place
Leaving highway to
where mountains reach to heaven
we drove the stone road
Fishing beaver ponds
dad came on bees, lost his specs
on return just bees
One night as we camp
a timberwolf comes to call
returns to dark night
On the upper lake
clouds mask the solar eclipse
but fish go crazy
One spring’s discovery
drawdown pools, teeming with trout
who won’t touch anything
A five pound rainbow
beached chasing Peter’s lure
red stripe - jealousy
Late autumn, Lake B
big browns cruise downwind beaches
only we know where
A ski resort appears
wonderland needs paved roads
we protest in vain
Twenty years later
returning with my children
to an unknown place
If you slow to look
irate traffic leans on horns
rushing to their lodge
My kids and I fish
a borrow pit now a“lake”
tourists' put and take
To a grizzly bear
roads are barriers wider
than flooding rivers
Kananaskis is
four-fifths a line of haiku
Kananaskis is
MM
Ode to My Love Jesus Christ--
My love Jesus, you inspire me to write.
I love the way you look, I pray humble,
Invading my mind day and through the night,
Always dreaming about the deep cimbal.
Let me compare you to an able larch?
You're more than bible, caring and giant.
Light clouds dull the stable flowers of March,
And the springtime has the right alliant.
How do I love you? Let me praise the ways.
I love your excited eyes, feet and smile.
Thinking of your pibal feet fills my days.
My love for you is the scribal trial.
Now I must away with a tribal heart,
Remember my white words whilst we're apart.
3/5/19
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr.©2019
As he wears his golden crown
He forages frantically.
The goldcrest alights, he touches down.
He wears his crown magnitoquently.
"Fee hee hee" he chirps rapidly
A spider, the goldcrest consumed;
From its web he had plucked it away.
His excited search for food then resumed,
He must eat to survive another day.
The diminutive bird hopped from bough to bough
In search for food he scoured the tree.
His search of the tree was thorough
and fruitful;he had enough to eat.
"Fee hee hee" he sang satisfied
Next, the bird went to the forest floor.
Surrounded by altitudinous conifers,
He noticed on the ground were insects galore
which he closely monitored.
The beetles and earwigs and ants and lice
were building and crawling and swarming.
The goldcrest once and twice and thrice
swallowed an ant with no warning.
"Fee hee hee" no more did he hunger;
His body was warming
"Fee hee hee" he sang from the tree
as he sat on a prominent perch.
So much the little bird could see
from the top of the high-reaching larch.
As dusk fell, he remained on the plant;
He listened to the woodpigeons croon.
The very next day he would feast on more ants
........He drifted off into a sloom
By Sean Martin-Byrne
pine, spruce, larch -
be my witness
as i lead this pack of wolves
across the taiga of existentialism;
i am the biome of conflicting identities;
my winters are harsh, my summers, mild:
i am the earth -
i am its plains, its forests, its rivers,
on which we graze, hunt, and drink;
i am the oldest of the conifers, the fir of might and age,
i am the sad, forgotten spirit, the looming apparition,
the boreal winds, the storms of ice, the murky sea,
the hoarfrost in the foliage of pines -
i am the spectre over moors at night, wailing the lost love,
and when i dream,
i dream polewards, and in saudade:
boreal night, lull me to sleep -
i can hear the ambience of the Östersjö waves.
In the shower of dawn's
Slow daylight, kissed by
Angels locks, there came
A wave of bird sounds,
Then barking crafty fox
And I in nature’s orchestra,
Amid the fusty scores, the
Sound of waking voices,
Pushed slow through leafy doors
Then carried these across
The plain and back by echoes
March, not stopped by winter’s
Cudgel, nor bending bough
Of larch
So trickle me, streams water-
Hand, and babble to the brook
And hold me fierce like laughing
Giant, holds page of nature’s book
And I’ll not stir to country leave
For city's wicked grip, for there
The rasp of bloodless wind, sends
Out the its wiry whip
So build the wall’s bucolic fort
And wrest me all the more,
Where chick and weasel miss
The stare of eagles’ horny claw
And if one morn through mist
And rain, the tocsin sounds
Its bell, remember me o’er styal
And dell, so far from city hell
HOAR FROST
Multi-fingered trees drowned in the mist
Mist like the cold hand of death coming to Ramses
Last night’s mist - purifying spirit
Enveloping all in the frost
Like a well-tended graveyard
Dead, silent, nothing moves
The ugly old dead trees - and
The lovely young live trees
Are levelled, enveloped,
Masked in a white shroud
Each tree - asleep, dead
Recreated in white
Born again of water and Holy Spirit
Ready to enter the kingdom of heaven.
All souls look alike
All the trees look alike
New souls reborn sinless
Souls of trees waiting
These ghost trees are not real trees
Their previous life forgotten, bees and pollen
All sensual feeling numbed
Their tree souls purified
Pure innocence - sin free
Prepared for tree heaven
Cold joy of heaven
Ah….the forgotten delights
Of being a larch or elder or oak.
The warmly imperfect summer life
The Orchestra
Best heard alone in the silence
of blackness pre-dawn.
The hall, redolent of memories,
lighted by a single bulb-
log walls fashioned from old larch;
a metal roof above.
The orchestra of rain, wind.
Initially a hesitant patter;
Almost individual drops, far away, distant,
then the building crescendo of speed and intensity.
Becoming a persistent cadence
accompanied by the gurgle
of the gutter as the rain courses through it
to splash and echo on the rocks below.
Then decrescendo of sound as the rain
retreats to the darkness from whence it came.
Finally, the coda:
Intermittent, hesitant sprinkle of drops
punctuating the silence.
David Holmes
December 30, 2021
My long sleep wasn't disturbed by a Mallard,
no visions of wars but of absolute serenity...
giving this body a vital boost of energy;
flowing was the blood, sound was the mind!
The green-winged Teal seemed too hungry,
and munching on a piece of bread, hurriedly
glanced and drastically feared the rangy vagrant
with a face so pale that even startled a big cat!
Opening my window to the cool breeze of March
takes the whiff of staleness out of the dim room;
observe the yellow begonias cherishing its caress...
'though perturbed by the smell of the forest Larch!
Flowers don't feel pain, neither they show gloom:
tend to them and they will display their loveliness!
I grab my pen and start composing another lyric
to describe this wonderful season that delights;
I'm glad that winter has put an end its snowy days!
Do poets choose their words according to images,
or they pop into their heads and write ditty verses
diverging from the norm of poetry that's too intrinsic?
Opening my window to the cool breeze of March...
oh, sonorous spring has arrived ending my confinement
to a glass desk with a Dell computer to find a replacement!
Does artificial intelligence offer some enlightenment?
Not all cope with loneliness: dramatic was the fate of Lach;
how many of us have used extreme measures to stay afloat?
Like the bend of the larch in the wind of dawn,
As a twilight sky or a starlit lawn;
Like fleecy clouds in their shifting white,
As capricious as the moon is bright
Is the soul of him.
Like whispering leaves when the woods are green,
Singing with a brook through a night time dream;
With sweet mysteries that his eyes withhold,
Passion to me he never has told
To the soul of me.
Like the vision of midnight that follows my eye,
The shadow he casts that will not reply
To the song in my heart; for all that I know
It brings me to the place where I want to go
For I love him so.
There is a sadness in the Birch
In Autumn with the fall of leaves.
So silently, so no one hears
She sheds her golden tears.
There is a steadfastness in Oak,
It spreads its giant lofty limbs
In widening arcs for all to see;
A venerable mighty tree.
There is a softness in the Larch
Its feathery leaves cascading down
In waterfalls towards the ground;
Small fir-cones scattered all around.
There is a proudness in the Plane.
This city dweller stands aloof,
Cheats pollution with pealing bark
In roadside verge or formal park.
There is a beauty in the Beech;
It has the greenest leaves in Spring,
So small and delicate and bright,
Unfurling in the early light.
Eternal hope is in the Yew
Immortal in the cemetery,
Transcending death, it speaks of life
For souls who leave this world of strife.