#64.20 - Seeing the Trees

Print of oak - test print

Today I had to stay home with Ghin. I did some gardening, a lot of my printing homework. I wrote nine small poems about nine native trees of Ireland. I also did nine cut outs. The 'book' is going to be called 'Seeing the Trees' - a take on the saying 'seeing the wood from the trees'. I was going to call it Seeing the Trees from the Wood, but it was too long.

So here they are, the nine trees. They are arranged from order of what I call season. Willow begins it. All of them are female spirits - dryads, as it were. But Irish dryads.

Willow

Keeper of secrets
Woodwoman of the loom
Feline flowered salix
Winter's finest moon

Hazel

Nine nuts nibbled
Silvery sleek salmon
Wisdom's wrought wound

Hawthorne

Greenest leafe
Fairest crowne
Reddest berrie
Sharpest thorne

Birch

Within your wooden veins
Rises spring's sweetest song

Oak

Matriarch of the Mantle
Your sinewy arms encircle
Our glade's comprehension
of Time

Rowan

Your feathered branches
Host finest suns
They nestle as clusters of
Carmine cabochons

Alder

Maiden of Waters,
Lake, wetlands and streams
In tiny fists of anguish
Are borne pellucid schemes

Crab Apple

Adornment and tragedy
Decorate you like a score

Yew

May we dream for a thousand years
and never seek to wake

I also played some piano. Cooked for Ghin, did some background reading. I mean this is very positive. I should be happy with this, but instead I feel remarkably unproductive.

It is very strange how poetry is able to seep from me quite easily. I guess I was just in the mood.

Tomorrow is Thursday. I will do my lesson planning for tomorrow now and then - I did rest a lot today as well, in addition to doing all of that. I also need to do general planning. Everything is falling into place with work and the Forest School. I guess today was the last day of my down time. And I feel like winter has come to an end.

For the garden I cleared more of the leaves at the back and organised things a bit more. I think this weekend I will have to cart everything which can be carted to the dump to the dump. There is a lot to be dumped. Then I'm going to clear out the shed. It was supposed to be really super bad weather. But it looks like it's good. I rescued some ivy and repotted it into a nice terracotta pot. Then I cleared out lots of seed pots which had been there since last Easter. It is now Lent after all. I will do a proper fast and detox for Lent.

It begins today then.

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