Forest Poem by Paul Butters

Over the brow of the hill I go;
Strolling along a deep-brown, dusty,
Sun-baked track.
I see a valley before me.
The meadows hug a running river,
Cut across my path.
Behind is a forest: thick, high and deep;
A mattress on a bumpy bed of hills.
Nearer I see swirls of leaves,
Soughing in the wind, like waves surfing onto the shore.
Now I hear a stream, rushing and gushing along;
Bouncing from the pebbles below,
Playing a merry bell-like jingle all the way.
See the surf, flowing along platforms,
Over tiny waterfalls,
Into pebble-dammed pools of dark tranquillity.
Smell the dank decay of the forest,
See the cool, lightless hollows of its interior:
A sun-speckled chaotic mozaic: a lofted black canopy.
Below, where I am, all is dead:
No carpet of grass, just dank leaf-soaked earth,
Grotesque smelly parasites,
And tree-barks coated with wet green slime.
Yet further forward, where the undergrowth intertwines -
There’s life and warmth:
A verdant cloud-scape of flowering shrubs,
Attended by a myriad of butterflies.
I soon am lost, in enchantment.
At last, reluctantly, I refind my way back,
Into the setting sun.

(Notes: Written 1997: in fact a reworked story of mine from the late 1960s, which was inspired by Stephen Chapman's story version of 'Blackberries') .