April
I tread carefully through a tunnel
of tall pale grasses,
Tufts of animal hair caught in the bushes, in the mud
lost during a struggle or simply molted?
Further in, just off the path,
wrapped raggedly around the base of a rotting tree trunk
the remains of an unidentifiable animal,
gutted,
only the tattered pelt decaying darkly into the earth,
becoming one with the blackened trunk.
My feet sink into the quickening soil.
Slight pussy willows
thrust from the oozing mud at the pool's edge.
Beyond the creek, tired grey trees
thrust stark forms into the hazy sky.
Blackened tree roots and stumps punctuate
the watery haven.
The frog's voice is alive in the swamp.
A good sign.
The air is still.
Sun warms my body.
The air is chill.
And I , like a sponge, am once again
soaking up the life forces of the swamp.
Massive tree roots
thrusting
black and
mudclogged
from the turgid water
like prehistoric mammals
suddenly
surfaced.
Deep in the swamp
killer vines wrap
and wind
around innocent trees
strangling them,
bending them
in their tenacious grip.
Sinuous,
strong,
they stretch their interminable, feathered,
grasping,
disappearing black tentacles
deeper
and deeper
into the swamp.
Frail
sturdy
pink, blue, violet,
scattered around
the tree's base
like a precious necklace.
What is this muse
this darkling thing
that lures me from home
in the early Spring ?
I look up and see stark against the ruminating sky
great grey limbs torn from towering trunks
Not fallen to the ground
but caught mid-air
in crotches of still-standing trees
They rest there lying parallel to the earth
in shattered splendour
like sacrifices offered to the gods
or like bridges going nowhere.
Hieroglyphics
engraved in the soft, dark
underbelly of rotting bark
like secret, ancient writings
indecipherable.
I think,
fossilized imprints of fern, leaf, or snail
But no
Just paths that worms have made
in the rotting bark
leaving their coded message
for my eyes only
my foolish eyes
that imagine fossil scripts
instead.
Last year a dead raccoon
Fresh road kill it looked like,
tossed like a sack deep in the roadside ditch
unseen at first though I was painting close by.
Death's scent had not yet risen on the moist air.
A huge uprooted tree
blackened roots
beseeching the sky,
jutting stumps,
fallen limbs,
tangled branches,
thrusting trees
all reflected in the
soggy, sodden waterways
rife with life
And death.
A tender month.
Pale green haze of new growth
begins to obscure the bony structure of the swamp.
Too sweet for me.
I search for my fallen tree, for its upturned blackened roots
the pit-strong mass,
weighty,
bulky,
thrusting into the air,
reflecting its silent strength in the water.
Energy floods through me -
quick long brushstrokes on the canvas,
vertical this time,
a strong structure for tender growth
that weaves a misty green haze among the branches.
a dramatic contrast
to the darkly tangled
mass
of fallen tree.