Just outside Mountain, Wisconsin
the forest lies. It invites me inside
to hear the stories, it longs to tell.
Around a curve a puddle of water
from a fall of rain.
At each turn I never knew
what I would find.
A photo of a bear in the dark
is posted at the gas station.
The clerk said it is deep
within the forest when I
stopped inside for a snack.
No one can say for certain
where the forest ends.
I’m going inside to see
what it reveals. Another level
of secrets lies in undergrowth.
All trees stretch their arms
upward reaching for the sun.
I’m driving around the state
to find my time and place.
Lands once stripped, replanted
in a public works project
during the Great Depression
to give the land new life.
A glance through a crown
shows the sun as it shines on me.
Each morning asks me to start again
after I step outside the motel.
You set fire to my garden
Burnt all the plants
Dug out all the dead stuff and Replanted
You say you did it to kill the weeds
You didn’t mean to kill the plants
That was a few months ago
I find the smell from your fire often visits me
It's almost as if my garden was still burning
The weeds are back
And I need you to burn them
But I won't ask for your help this time
I am called 'the ancient one' among my peers,
known for my sweeping limbs, as if they weep.
I was taken from the bank of the River Sugen
when my tender roots were still quite young.
From Nature's arms, I was carefully replanted,
nurtured and shaped by the one who cares for me.
He's gently pruned my limbs to keep me healthy
and taken me outside to absorb morning sunlight.
I am proud to be a specimen of Japanese culture,
a miniature version of my Asian flora ancestors.
Insubstantial
I opened the window in the door, one early morning.
and was met with a face that looked like a cloud; it
blew frost roses on the glass, they were so beautiful,
abstract, and oh, so fragile.
Years ago, by the cloister`s wall, I saw some miniature
Looking at roses, I replanted them in my garden, and they
disappeared, I thought they had died out, but this spring
They were by my wall, nodding shyly in the breeze.
As the spring turned into summer, they had no shade
and disappeared like frost roses on the window glass;
And that is ok by me, cause I know they are there just
under the earth, waiting for another spring.
I inhale deeply, take the first step with desire in my soul to grow
to be the seed replanted in the soil to receive Vitamin D from Father Sun
I wanna be free, but I know I cannot fear living
just because I breathe out my nostrils and out my mouth.
I still hunger and desire for more for myself when I do not feel alive
if I run far enough to the hills
break the chains that held a tight grip on me will I still be free?
That is something I am still learning to understand.
Adopted early after birth
Replanted back into the earth
From small to tall, a tiny root
Withstanding all and resolute
It whispered and it whistled
Every wind song that it knew
It's verdant needles bristled
Glistening in frost and dew
A friend to all both large and small
Seeking refuge in it's shade
To rest and recline, with the fresh smell of pine
And a songbird serenade
From green, to red, to rust, to brown
Giving all it had left, back to the ground
A pine that spent it's time worthwhile
Living life with grace and dying with style
It taught me how to dance in the wind
Whenever it howls, be willing to bend
It taught me how to whistle a song
While giving back, as life moves along
Like you and I, trees live and die
When death comes young we question "why?"
The answer is, it's all by design
Down to the death of a hardy young pine.
Daniel Turner
The obstacle
After the none violent revolution in Portugal
1972, as often happens in my life when something
unusual happens, I was there, not knowing I was
witnessing history
My ship came to unload cargo, but we ended
up staying for weeks, a revolution is too important
to be wasted by mere cargo
In the village where I later settled.
the new era brought a road, not a big road
but wide enough for a school bus
there was an aber, where the road ended
two olive trees blocked the road for further
expansion
The trees belonged to an old man who refused
to sell his trees to the camera
With the dictatorship over and a new democracy
with rights and freedom for everyone
The school bus had to drive onto a field to get past
That lasted until the old man died
and his relatives allowed for the olive trees
to be removed, with roots and replanted in
someone's garden.
Callous rows gone fallow
human touch embraced
Hate uprooted — Love replanted
tilled in Heaven’s grace
(Dreamdleep: February, 2024)
I have always liked the hollow dark,
the cave, the sealed carcass of the night,
the lightless womb of the closed seed.
You said you were human,
and I laughed until my belly shook the earth.
I Imagined your bones cracking
from the heat of a great fire.
I ground my teeth with the ash
of a few brittle words.
"No one is 'human',
we are alien seeds replanted,
into a fertile blindness.
Humans are the shells,
the pods, the skin of a reality
they have yet to realize or reveal.
The garden,
what you call 'soul',
is a transplanted being,
it lives concealed,
within that alien you.
Keep that garden,
hidden from any who would,
proudly claim to be
remotely human!"
I was born in a muddy time
created to be a field of broken bricks.
Years wove their weeds.
There was hope,
enclaves of suburban heavens
old men in grim pubs spoke of.
You might think
that I pulled myself together,
dug my boots out
of that land of bitter muck.
Not I,
I killed the weeds only,
carried still, the rubble and smut
inside my belly for decades
only to give birth to an inner life,
small green shoots I then replanted
in earthenware pots,
tokens left on the bare platforms
of railroad stations
beautiful orange dahlia
must be dug up in the fall
replanted every spring
dainty, fragrant, fragile, pretty dahlia
worth the trouble, if you live in zone 5
and I do
The estate of my spreading life
has been plowed over many times.
Plantations have withered and been replanted,
grain fields have turned to dust,
have laid fallow for years
yet now the corn is high and golden again,
trees felled and burnt now grow tall.
Mind body and spirit maps
have had to be redrawn,
shorelines and boundaries moved.
However now I can walk my mind back into past times
and circle all the seasons of my existence
at once.
Barn doors are wide open to tomorrow lands,
My earth is still rich and good,
my store runneth over.
I am not the master here, just a worker following
a tilling, plowing, and seeding Owner;
I am charged only to oversee
this landscape of me.
When this soil I have worked
at last is blown away on the winds of time
a plantation of plenty
will be reflected in the mirror of eternity,
and I will be a servant of my most High Self
at home once more in my Master's mansion.
The words taste like music
from worlds long ago
Each letter resavored
in harmonies old
Coming to harvest
their sweetness imbues
A cave for an orchard
in wall painted hues
Old symbols retilling
those questions inside
Reborn when discovered
then never to hide
The silos refilling
new birthrights to seed
Replanted within us
—a symphony freed
(The New Room: January, 2023)
Been searching for it;
It’s already been found;
Been looking for it;
Already on my mind;
Well
I am a wretched undone;
Just me myself a lonely one;
I been livid, living life sinfully;
My Lord Jesus Christ came and set me free
I am free
Freed
I am free
In deed I be
I am free
I am free
I am free
I am free
Was taking God for granted?
I was a rotten seed being scattered;
Not my growth is stunted;
Be replanted, now I am flourishing
Well
I am well
I am
I am
I am
Growing in His beautiful light
Now I am His beautiful flower
I was a wretched undone;
Just me myself a lonely one;
I been livid, living life sinfully;
My Lord Jesus Christ came and set me free
But when Jesus died for me, for me
He gave me a place in heaven, now I stand free
I am free
Freed
I am free
In deed I be
I am free
I am free
I am free
I am free
I'm free
11/20/22
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2022©
If you lean slightly left
while facing the sewage plant
then that view of Ohio
could be back in the 18th century,
there's even a long cabin
resurrected from somewhere else
and replanted here.
The Wright Brothers palatial home
is now maintained by the State,
the 'flyer' hangs in a museum
built upon an old Shawnee village.
The 'hood' nearby
litters itself and craps on the once
well-to-do houses;
it's enough to make an old Indian cry.
Time meanders around
an invisible clock face,
even the future
has one ox-cart wheel
stuck a rut,
while the other spins slowly on.
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