All night her skin erupts,
her face a sphagnum mask.
Puffballs sprout
from her nostrils
acorns from her ears.
Her eyelashes are ferns,
pine needles and twigs poke
from her thicket of wild hair,
dreams snag
like sheep’s wool on her spiky briars.
The darkness lures her in
down muddy bridle paths
to a spinney where
she shelters behind
the thick foliage of herself,
her heart in hiding. Here,
memories rot,
rank as the fetid stench
of fox,
and silent birds roost
in her deep woods.
Behind her mossy hood
she inhales the reek
of solitude,
dreams of ancient
forests:
of what is concealed,
what is wild, mysterious.
A strange yet beautiful
ambience,
souless, yet, inhabited by
fortitude,
the images return the
awareness to nature’s
ever-present picture,
the senses and instincts
now honed for
the gritty moments
of what is, and what
isn’t relevant,
like the breath of the wind
passing over a landscape’s
changing picture;
at some stage,
winter will paint a new face
on the old green shaded one,
a brief outline
of the bones beneath the beauty.
For now, we can
enjoy the labours of
the flowers, watch the work
of the bees in their travels,
enjoy the richness of
the now.