Best Understory Poems
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Sunlight sweeps above the dale, while shades of Heather lift their veil
Then gentle mist of morning swirls, enhancing dawn with nature's pearls
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Songbird's flight encircles glen, to spot late crawler's search for den
Yet...
Not all that dwells in understory, hides this day... this day's their glory
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The songbirds flee... the piper grins
"Far Darrig O'Malice yer at it again"
The silence broke
the wildwoods rustle
from near and far, the wee ones hustle
~
The songs roll out
the barrels too
the leprechauns abandon shoe
They all break out one piece of gold, to waste before their play grows cold
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They barter sheep while lifting hogs
They saddle ... ride ... the farmer's dogs
And all the while they laugh and shout, they never spill their mugs of stout
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The Cluricauns with stouter trumpet, descend the town... subdue the strumpet
Spend their purse to chase romance
the quean much slicker, steals their pants
~
Within the glen with dusk's approach, the smoke gets thick as suppers roast
The music swirls, the echoes sail, the dancers chant an Irish tale
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An those with naked butts are taught... they stop, it gives the bugs a shot
Far Darrigs crawl beneath the kegs, they pop the corks and fill their legs
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St. Patrick's blessed another year
The sound of snoring
now all you hear
~~~
This intricacy, this forest
fanfare of green life, flower
and fungi, the creatures
that crawl its damp understory
of bush and fern, and above,
the wing born marvel
of those masters of the air -
cause the mind to pause
with wonder as when under
the high ceiling of a cathedral.
Here too is something made
to hold what seems holy,
an ideal blest by a notion
of some unspoiled thing.
And here too are hymns
composed out of an innate
desire to praise by being true,
bug, bird or towering tree
all sharing in the presence
of that unfathomable mystery.
Nicky, the neighbor’s dog, drags a road kill home.
A beautiful pelt like those fox shoulder garments women wore in the
forties.
But the head is crushed beyond recognition—maybe it’s a fox and that’s
why Nicky, a canine, is conducting this wake on our front lawn.
Loretta, my wife’s mother, is in the hospital again. Forty years of Crohn’s
disease has finally broken her.
It may take some time but she won’t bounce back from this episode.
None of us are sorry to see her die, not even Loretta. There will be a
thunderous downpour during her last hour.
I like the story about the nuns hitting Peg in school–contumacy is a sin.
Emile and Loretta considered it an inappropriate punishment for their
cherished adopted daughter.
So they pulled her out of Catholic for public school. They did their own
thinking about discipline.
Early Spring, peepers all night, then the birds take over at dawn.
Soothing—the mourning doves.
During this half of the year, May through October, we live in a green
bower.
We turn the house inside out, move into the mountains.
In their annual order, flowers appear in the understory: coltsfoot, hepatica
and trillium through to the end, late purple aster, spotted joe pye and
pearly everlasting.
We let Nicky nurse her road kill, watch over it, roll around on it.
Don’t let go of the steering wheel while driving fast in the passing lane.
You may feel about the planet what
you feel about a great baseball team or band:
that once there was a moment when, unknown
to us at the time, we convened
and lost and found ourselves in what we created.
Who should I thank for this day?
A fresh-mown lawn is a robin's repast.
A bear a black bear a rolling delicately dancing
graceful as silence sailing through the ferns and understory
unafraid and in no hurry.
My musician referral service, vacation rental business,
nonprofit management system, plant identification database,
great American songbook and anthology of poems. Coach says
in a thousand years back and forth games like lacrosse and soccer
will be played against genetically engineered primates
but baseball will be played solely by humans.
In a thousand years, amen.
Sand swishes between toes, pulls you toward peace
the palms fanning you, slowly, like a lover feeding grapes.
Birds peek shyly from the understory, sometimes hover
and chirp-nag you for disturbing their nest.
Every wave splashes me toward the permanent home
beneath the sea, crabs praying on life, tangs spitting
more sand, and more sand, its caught in my eyes
and I most doze, bake and doze, submerge, swim
until its only my toes realizing there is life, sand
edging up on me from every side, counting the lines
down to where there is an end, breath choked off
because all the sea, and sand, and prayers, and prey
can no longer get to me. I've walls of peace swaying
gently like a snake hypnotized before the charming pipe
to say come home, and know I'm always home,
always home, praying, praising, the rise and fall of sand.
https://youtu.be/Otq_Z1-99rE
https://m.soundcloud.com/user-921599710/our-rainforests
Deep into the rainforest, a struggle to survive
From insects to leaved trees, wanting all to thrive
The habitat of animals, species all around
Living things a-plenty, crawling on the ground
The four main layers play a different role
The bio-diversity forms part of the whole
The dark forest floor and the understory
Shorter plants existing, many bugs to see
The vibrant middle layer, yet forms the canopy
Climbing the emergent, just like a monkey
The strong plant materials, helps to build a home
For people of the Amazon, food that has been grown
Tropical regions, Equator ever near
A moderate climate, giant trees are here
Forests on a mountain, misty all around
Coated in a moss, such an eerie surround
North and South America and Oceania
Asia and Europe, as well as Africa
There’s a cycle of life, yet deforestation
Affects the homes of animals for plantation
Removing ecosystems, can cause erosion
Droughts as well as flooding, less cohesion
The modern ways of man affects vegetation
Contributing to a silent devastation
Replanting, recycling, assisting with crops
Steps of preservation quench like raindrops
The precious seeds and life, of which can be found
Yet, it’s not too late to turn this world around
Written by Geraldine Taylor ©
We like trees.
Rocks. Crows.
Trees are good.
Shade. Food. Wood.
If they leave,
we'll leave, too.
Snow. How come
some there, none here.
Sun can kill
or be fun.
God can't care
about you, one.
Jacket caught
in thought thicket.
Barberry, rose
thorn in nose.
Elect a nobel laureate
not a noble idiot.
Eat. Eat so much
your bones grow.
Kinnakinnik. Chinquapin.
Almost edible words.
Naked buds, bears,
understory shrubs.
Rhodora in winter, capsule like a claw,
remains of the 5-part flower Emerson saw,
gone to seed. Deciduous blossoms
have their own winter beauty and a power
akin to the fittest's survival, self-same
that brought me, musing, here. Large globose buds!
(that dwarf the rose's but not the butternut's)
discern it from other Ericaceae that
surround this inland wetland. The Lord
all claim to worship is not superior
to thou. I'm passing through naming you,
your parts, and the autumn elaeagnus who
is your neighbor. Good a walk as it gets
before edible understory herbs sprout.
Winter's early evening breeze
feels and smells the same now,
as when sixteen,
except less promising
because more consoling,
contenting rather than regenerating contentious breath
of future hopes and dreams,
knowing we conspire somehow,
Earth and I,
because I feel richer to love this way,
than to breathe evening's winter still, alone.
I am less sure this was not my last daylight
in this operatic, yet ridiculously distracted,
lifetime landscape of sensexstory memory.
When I was sixteen,
my understory was more of a musical-comedy landscape
that would remain forever Peter Pan young, virginal,
well...hopefully not that.
Such confidence of seeing yet another
and another, apparently endless,
pink dawn,
turning yellow,
introducing blue hemisphere,
framed by green Earth's polycultural grasses
and monocultural asses,
which, at sixteen,
I found more amusing
than patience perdures into sixtyfour.
Winter's now later evening silence
remembering sixteen and sixtyfour
together
over vodka-laced pomegranate.
Underground rivers unsettle thoughts,
feelings on stable ground.
Real estate doesn't sound as real
with thoughts of hyporheic flow
beneath our feet,
out of sight and sound.
Rivers are meant to have light on top,
transparency.
Underground flow must look more like a furtive capillary
than an upfront tributary,
bringing salvific moisture
down into and across and through
deep ecological roots of fertility.
Hypostatic unions
are contrasts between understory backgrounds
emerging into focal foreground,
like darkness of night's flowing complexities
from which light emerges each day
then fades again,
like Yang creation stories
emerging from Yin
hypostatic partnering,
hyporheic flow
deep down within ecological consciousness,
subterranean channels
feeding timeless roots
of healthy real estates,
cooperative becoming.
The Gospels share a negative understory,
thematic across all four.
However diverse these four voices may be
in describing and delineating Messianic love,
and political-economic priorities for poor spirits,
all four are univocal with anecdotal warnings:
If you are on the supremely powerful hoarding side
referring to those less fortunate than your enlightened self
as mere cowards
and traitors
and sinners
being who they marginally are,
as they perhaps criminally are,
for acting out insanely,
as they compulsively,
but not long-term nurturingly, will,
then you are on a wrong side
of co-redemptive ecopolitical action;
the wrong side of the GoodNews Gospels.
Blaming the victims
of poverty and ecopolitical marginalization
of abuse and neglect,
of addiction and victimless criminalization,
is the Gospel-condemned hypocrisy
of desecrating Pharisees
and Sadducees,
Publicans
and other clericalist malignant Aristocrats,
Caesars breeding Mammon
rather than CoMessiahs breathing Manna.
If we create an old with new blend of Jesus
as Solomon,
a more positive Gospel message
invites discerning issues of freedoms and rights to say
and/or do and not do
by asking ourselves, and each other:
Will this democratize freedoms to love,
to participate
to cooperate
to look for WinWin resolutions?
And, will this build higher boundaries around monoculturing restrictions
toward further WinLose anger,
fear,
intolerance,
chronic hatreds,
while excusing hypocrisies
of supremacists calling themselves on the side of defusing love's barriers,
removed from cowards,
losers,
soft on healthy defense,
fostering long-term economic disaster areas,
deniers of LeftBrain healthy nondual co-realities,
detractors from patriarchal capital-obsessed evolutionary self-aggrandizing theories
as more culturally important
than Matriarchal-ReGenerative CoOperation Stories
about Messiahs
and wise guys, royal as humble-servant birth
of healthy,
courageously cooperative,
mutually trusting and vulnerable ecopolitics.
Blackbrush -- Coleogyne ramosissima
the dominant understory shrub
in the pinyon-juniper canyons.
Mountain-mahogany -- Cercocarpus montanus and ledifolia.
Single-leaf ash -- Fraxinus anomalus
and possibly a western hophornbeam
by the small birch-like leaves
and the shredding bark
in a moist stretch of joint trail.
The joint-fir, green ephedra
looks like an ocean plant.
Could the wind or white water rivers alone
have shaped these sandstone, red rock forms?
Network of canyons, inverse of mountains.
It had to be ocean
ebbing and flowing, emotionally, like wind,
moving atmosphere, thicker
shaving, scraping, polishing, gouging, digging
fish canyons
then, shallower, dinosaur swamps
now, dry, rock gardens.
Explain the human history with water:
did the Anasazi visit neighbors
along the canyon rims and deep within,
combination caves and red-rock houses
small windows, doorways, just crawlways,
with corn gifts on summer evenings
when the canyon bottoms held permanent, not intermittent,
streams? After them
came the Ute and Navajo, Spanish and English.
Ravens dine on road kill.
A few long red roads connect some canyons.
The unprotected flats are overgrazed, rabbitbrush.
It is interesting
that as I learn the woody and herbaceous plants,
walk the desert foothills, I too could stay.
Who are we
in ego's deductive dark winter
decomposing fallen embryos
nurturing healthcare?
Who are we
springtime consumers of inductive light
and dark wet nights
nourishing ecstatically growing life systems?
Who are we
in diastatic summer's full regeneration,
bright light warm absorbing flows
of water's baptismal promise?
risk,
opportunity
for future replenishment?
Who are we
producing fall's winnowed harvests
branching
flowing
flying scattered seeds of time's intense dense integrity?
Advent of four-prime spiral seasons,
light's empowerment
balancing heart-root rhythmic systems
flowing Earth's nurturing river
of rich polycultural
polypathic
polymorphic becoming
Understory for Earth's Ground of Being,
RNA soil languaging DNA soul regenerators,
revolutions enfolding evolution's bilateral Tao way.
Guilt is immortal
Grief can live only in the tender hours,
in the sweet bittersweet tender days -
the days who number some number
unknown to all, felt by each...
If guilt makes its home where
seeds of grief are sown by circumstance,
watered by the downpour tears of the broken,
lit by shadow at the feet of those missing the missing,
will grief ever come to fruit?
No.
If guilt must grow.
(And only if.)
Let it be put off.
A hole in the canopy
letting light find the darkened forest floor.
There where rot rises and decay undoes all doing.
Here in the dappled understory each story comes to rest (at best.)
Here in the dappled understory where the rich soil flowers only in mushroom.
This is the onlywhere where grief can grow.
Grief takes root, takes hold, takes it torn form in only the brief.
Guilt is the mind displacing the work that each heart must do.
The brief needs of grief arise where and when the head might, of habit, of its own twisted comfort, displace the heartneeds with mindwants and revel in guilt.
Grief needs.
This.
Grief needs.
You.
Grief needs.
Now.
Will we not have Grief have its time, in its time?
It’s place, in its place?
In the light of the dark?
-ShhDragon
We know that trees reach...
Ignoring the substance
of Earth and seeking
the damp and the light,
the wet on the way,
to the light on some
far side, a far side
with promise of light
when all here is dark.
All moments are rooted
within themselves;
and in themselves
they find Reach
Past shadows,
the understory of
reach, following
slants and slivers of shine:
first charcoal, now
jades, following gold
to the promise
of blue.
reach, reach
each, each
moment
reach, reach
each, each
moment
of life.
To skies
seen above;
to skies
believed below.
But did you know?:
a fallen Fraser
a felled fig
a downed dogwood
a horizontal horse chestnut
may reach all the same
like long-dead ancestors
whose stories and myths are
told over cut-split-spark wood
late at night. Carrying stories,
wisdom, laughter, & lessons...
...and their meanings teach you
...and their meanings reach you
beyond death, from another shore.
For a good reach can outlast
death,
can outfox
time,
can outdo
death.
So, too the timber
whose roots kiss the air,
whose leaves've lost
sight of the light,
continues its sacred
reach...
If you look
across the gap
to the distant shore
you may yet see
the teachings of trees
uprooted and rotting.
The teachings of trees
so muted, so not-Spring.
There! Over the burble,
retired from reaching
but still she is teaching
the value of reaching;
becoming a bridge
that we each might reach,
tiptoeing on beech,
to the far 'n long-promised
beach.