In the Bracken

Port Alberni back yard owl

If ever you would
speak with any tree,
come walking in the forest
here with me.
I'll show you the wild mushroom 
and the root,
but where the ancients gather,
set no boot.

If you would speak
with nature spirits wild,
you must maintain the heartbeat
of a child,
learn riversong and 
mountain chasm deep.
You must commune with angels
in your sleep.

As you step lightly on
the pungent moss,
and feel the leaves
the winter wind doth toss,
let your spirit fly away
among the trees.
It will return
upon the morrow's 
breeze.

I go into the forest
dark and deep,
every night after
I fall asleep,
become a woodland 
guardian, reborn
I do not want to leave
when it is morn.

Last night my spirit
fought as a black wolf,
against four brown wolves
on the forest floor,
This told me
that a battle lies before,
my spirit having 
recognized
its door.

Come with me.
I will show you secret groves,
moss-hung and ancient
in this stand of pine.
Deep in the bracken,
where the  hoarfrost glows,
the Old Ones are singing Home
this heart of mine.


The Sunday Mini-Challenge at Real Toads is to write a form poem, after the style of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I managed a form poem of sorts, which insisted on its own rhythm and meter, and will post it here as an exercise which  could still use some work. Last stanza has changed a few times and isn't right yet . :)