TREE HEALING


Last winter I spent some weeks in Coventry emptying and selling our family home. This was a difficult time, saying goodbye not only to my parents but to my childhood and my link to England. This house remained my home, it was where we all returned to, where my own children and even my tiny grandchild stayed and visited, a special place for us all. Being at the house without my father, sorting through my parents belongings, knowing I would soon not be able to return, already missing the garden, I was overwhelmed with sadness.   This poem recalls the day I tried and failed to be cheerful, leaving my friends after helping to decorate the party room, knowing I was still set apart from normal life. Without thinking I stopped at the woods, alone in the dusk and after time with the trees and the silence, felt some sadness lift and float away into the night sky. I returned home lighter, with oak leaves in my pocket.  Grief is a process, there are days when I am still hit hard but little by little the joy has returned, and the memories are soothing rather than painful.





 TREE HEALING

I left the party before it started,
tired from the effort of being normal,
afraid to dull the glittered cheer,
deflated like the purple balloons drifting
down from shamrocked walls, my
sighed breath failing to keep them afloat.

Driving back to emptied home, where
walls stare blankly, memories marked
by screws like thorns spiking woodchip,
shelves lonely without whispering stories,
wardrobes bared of clothed imprints,
beds stripped cold of their warmth.

Passing Crackley Woods, stop unplanned,
despite the darkening, the cold bone aching.
Pull on boots, bite fingers into gloves,
hide face until only salt pricked eyes
peep from tartaned wrap, dewing as
hot breath steams like damp pressed cloth.

Tread again the favoured path, past Lilian’s tree
through grassed clearing, quiet mind’s safe place,
crouch on jewelled green, mossy trunk
in memory of knee hugging pixie children,
slip on muddied trail through witness trees,
walking on, following memories.

Stop, still, silence all pervading,
entranced by twigged branches
clawing upwards, boned fingers lacing,
scratching the frost blue twilight sky,
chilled air cracked as crows rise,
black shadows circling ancient oaks.

Lost in the dank, at one in the gloaming,
feel my spirit free, roaming up, up,
soaring with the birds, swooping over
green fields sleeved in thorns,
flapping low in winged homage to my
sleeping loves, leafed warm in oak bed.






© 2018 Jacqueline Claire Knight.  All rights reserved. 



















Comments

  1. Liz Doyle10 June 2019 at 02:26

    Lovely - especially ‘lost in the dank’
    So evocative
    Thank you

    ReplyDelete
  2. Liz Doyle10 June 2019 at 02:26

    Lovely - especially ‘lost in the dank’
    So evocative
    Thank you

    ReplyDelete

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