To all the trees

Posted on by kylienorman

To all the trees I’ve ever loved:

To the top-lofty pines in the Surbiton rec

Whose swaying called down fear like an incubus on my chest;

Whose sails the wind caught

And who smote me with the memory of the ’90s gale

When the wind had taken my five-year-old self for a tree

And uprooted and flown the branches of me,

Tethered by a hand to my heart-in-her-mouth minder.

O how the tree me flew, shook and quaked her leaves –

I looked askance at trees with that

Fear on my chest until – what – eight years?

Then I climbed (the youngest of four) –

Learning the limb-trick from sisters before –

All the lightning-blasted tree gods of Richmond Park.

I can still feel the smooth handholds of pale, barkless wood

As I hoisted into the Old Sycamore’s embrace at Petersham Gate;

Each branch’s worn depression had its function:

Here in a timbery nook a place for my teacup;

Here my fancied crown would go;

There a hollowed dip for my legs, just so.

Of the woods I was queen.

And in Bolton, Yorkshire, on holiday for a time,

I found another worthy trunking throne;

Its limbs stepped nicely for my climb

(I liked best to climb in secret and alone,

This vantage point to view the corduroy fields below);

To the tree which gave up a fine bow for my father

To bend and string for the Maid Marian in me;

To all the trees that were ever dens to embower me:

Where I scraped my knees and mudded school gingham dresses;

To the bone-tangling graveyard yews with their dark inky bark;

To the fierce, prickling hollies that smarted young fingers;

To my cathedral of horse chestnuts on Coach Lane, burning fiercely in autumn rains.

And you, my Spreader Oak, that I grow with now,

Cooking your acorn children on your boughs;

Older than me by several winters been and gone:

I would know you down to the heartwood bone.

Spread o’er me your speckled, scalloped leaves,

With their wasp-gall hangers-on,

So that I can breathe,

So that I can breathe.

In amongst the clover

Posted on by kylienorman

Their white flowers offer
their lips to bee lovers
as they hover and linger
over a drop of nectar,
that is possibly sweeter
than anything – far better –
than I might taste, ever.
Whitely they bob like a
lay of snow over the
green in thick blessings or
a dying surrender at
close of an afternoon’s
long, tender while.
Trembling smiles
on the green near that
tree, but not under.
I watched the mower
cut down the clover
as though it were nothing,
just tidying the green.
For every clover that’s been
I mourn a little. Dreams,
spun from days of growing,
return fresher, quicker;
irrepressibly sweeter,
and here for the summer;
with rain to get plumper,
and lusher and bee-stung;
blushing beneath a sun
that beams adorations
on white-globe plantations.
I was never so happy as
when walking through clover,
a disciple of summer,
catching eye-fulls of bee-fur
on a blisteringly hot day.

Walking with my Father

Posted on by kylienorman

My father’s strides are twice the strides of mine;
bee-blinded and spore-gathered, I drag the path behind,
lingering by the dry stone wall a time
to see lapwings, fluff-fringed, give chase with their cries.
He makes space for my whimsies, as though delay
at vetchlings and foxgloves and other outdoor loves
were not a pain and he’d not rather be going
to lay the path ahead, to seek a stile,
and leave the tussocks, bogs and ditch behind.
The way is long, he’s things to do, but this too is true:
he lets me amble slow to know a place,
while striding on and covering twice the space.

Patiently, he waits my searches out,
calling advice on where to step and not.
In spite of warnings I am mud-slicked, got
with grasses, seed-muddled, moth-tickled, hot.
He keeps a gracious silence on my dirt;
he’s seen me bramble bruised and hurt
in childhood trees at childhood games when young,
knee-high to a sapling, unformed, unbegun
to life and death and future happenings.
His hands have swung me high up into trees;
and round in circles. Now, older, his hand’s squeeze,
in the fields’ up-and-overs, says ‘if you need.’

Together but separate, like moon and planet,
each walking our own particular gait. Always though,
when got ahead, he waits with half a knowing smile,
drawing a bead on the horizon mile until,
fresh with meadow daisies, speedwell, sorrel,
and weathered with smiles of green dreams –
of black moths and bullocks one week new,
and full of my discoveries and spring-caught cheer,
I at last appear; never so slow that he’d leave me behind,
even if he’s fly-swarmed and over-sun-warmed waiting.
My father strides with steps twice-large as mine,
along the path that I’ll eventually find.