Showing posts with label Winter Trees by Marion Lawless. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Winter Trees by Marion Lawless. Show all posts

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Winter Poems, 2020


I planted this giant Water Oak as a 4 foot tall twig 25 years ago.




My backyard on a sunny Winter day last week.




Winter Trees
By Marion Lawless

The trees are all bare tonight,
their gangly limbs, 
bony-fingered arrows
pointing to the ghostly full moon
shining luminously overhead
casting murky shadows
on the frozen ground.

Unearthly they seem---
like beings from another realm,
vulnerable and naked,
yet sure of who they are---
safe,
watched over 
by the stars.

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"Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?" ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982 


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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.