Garden of Verse: Trees for Me, Wearing Well for All Seasons

    I'm still celebrating trees this month. I don't know how long this fixation will last, but the way I'm feeling these days I may ride it a some considerable time. As the dominant species on the planet Earth -- so dominant that even though we're still newcomers we now have a whole geological period named after us: the Anthropocene -- human beings have to figure out a way to live on earth without living off it to the destructive extent that we are currently indulging in. 
            We have already destroyed most of the world's old forests. Yet all terrestrial life, animals and other plants, depend on climate regulatory and other functions provided by trees. 
             This said, two of my poems in the August 2018 issue of Verse-Virtual.com are celebratory -- at least that's the intent. Gloom and doom in abeyance. The third is something else altogether  
              The poem "This Tree" begins with a quote from an ancient source: 

"For you have five trees in paradise

which do not change,

either in summer or in winter

and their lives do not fall

He who knows them

shall not taste of death."

-- the Gnostic gospel of Thomas

            My poem continues:

This tree
From Adam's garden grew

And fed a world of green plant
eaters, tiny shrews that one day grew
into a race of limber primates,
a hungry crew
that ate green earth down to the bones

Five trees grew in Adam's garden
that do not change their clothes for winter
And their tribe lives on forever...
I would have them in my garden
Would they keep me in their world?

.... Please read the rest of this poem, and find many others, at Verse-Virtual.com http://www.verse-virtual.com/robert-knox-2018-august.html

 The second poem in the August issue, titled "Influence of Earth," also begins with a quote, this one from Thoreau. Then, nothing shy, I jump right in:


Influence of Earth
 "Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink,
  taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth."                                                                                                                                                                                              --Thoreau
 
Build yourself a cathedral in the trees
Hear bluebells ring in "Campanula"
Hear the birds play in the mulberries
            (knowing that it's work for them)
Drink down the shade from roofs of leaf-warp
weaving ceilings for the sky...  

          The third poem, "Hair: The Reunion," is a salute to the 'salon' that trims my personal growth.

           You can find all the poems here:
http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html


See this poem, and many others, at Verse-Virtual.com http://www.verse-virtual.com/robert-knox-2018-august.html