Forest Walk Poem by Roy Ballard

The trees are too well drilled and disciplined,
their lines closed up against some warlike threat.
The savage onset of the storming wind
has left them ordered and unwounded yet.
In places grow verbascums, flaming there;
first fiery foot of rocketry, they flare
and leap to sky in fits of yellow sparks,
their fireworks failing in the fir-damp air.
Misty, like a wraith, the dog's breath slips
among the trees along the rain-drenched scene.
Trees press us in with pallid, ghostly strips
of last year's needles, jealous of the green,
the soft new buds, the scents of pine and grass
and all the summer things that come to pass