In Wake Woods Poem by Barry Van Asten

Those seven ages of man, look upon
The star-bashed solemnity, and give ease
As the sky trembles to a canopy
Of ancient trees - the shire-sturdy oak.
Where I in all my moods of change
Could not look upon those sad-haunted woods
Or feel the mild February rain
Fall with secrets, never mine.

Where a time echoes to the muse of life
That dwells where hearts hurt, and scare
The impassioned soul of girl-turning-woman
To remain at her shaped idyll, once more.
Shadows are pulled by the light and the dark -
Spring soothes in avenues, to red campion, flows
As the woods ache with old anger, to unfold
With light in the bee-drone, and valerian.

A mist is upon me... if lips had met -
Silvery-wet, and softly painted
To tortures of the heart's distress
And a love no longer there, nor true.
An innocence lost, now masked by shade
Where the ceremony of death, stains
And lingers dreadful beneath the moon
That the inmost eye too soon, should sail.

Pale Will, with his myriad lines
Shows how little times have changed
In matters of the heart, for love
Is death, un-measured, destroyed by word!

Black cedar, where you stretch and twist -
The rhythm of the woods can never catch
That firing stem, that growing bud
That circles the aged wood... a glimpse
Of foxglove and betony twined - a link
Where the burnt mounds lie hushed in sleep;
A sleep of sun-dappled paths, that hold
Things in which we care to remember, no more.

And the brush and the birdsong, did give way
To the call of the beasts at eventide
That echoed like the twinkle of Iscariot's feet
With each step a betrayal... But night nears
And moonlit pools like phospher pits
Plop to the falling of decay and death;
The bulge and bloat of boughs, creak
An unearthly music, cloaked by night.

The hunger and harmony of woods, are shown;
Its bluebelled sanctuary - a mad things delight!
That thunderous mill pond, in the rain;
The crossing of footpaths like words that wind
Between blackened mounds and mud-filled hollows,
With the beat of roots, below each step.

Let the clouds gather, grow dark and brood
Over the mill water, turning the reeds.
Birds now fill the vacant space, where
The grinding of wheels and great sluices were heard:
A haven of a time when the wood was worked
And horses stamped the long days away.

But how I have left those tearful woods;
Left those trees and buds, to walk
With lips aflame and tormented heart -
Eyes like death's-heads in the dark,
And the fourteenth day of that dread month
Left me, haunted in those hushed groves.

A wind in the musk mallow, shrieks,
The forked path, shrouded in mist,
Glides in veils over columbine
Like wisps of history that won't be lost.
The dark boughs beneath the shade
Twist towards the light - they move,
Beneath willow eaves, water tracks glisten
As something fearful and ancient,
Through the old wood crawls.

The witch-o'-the woods, still
Dark and autumnal as the mill;
A ring of reeds, shadows the pond;
Rustle in the breeze, they sing
A language lost to us, and strange.
Roots, tugging at the river's roll
Where life flows throughout the wood.

Iris, violet and sorrel, sway
Beyond clumps and the bosky bole, towards
The scent-filled serenity of the daisy-glade,
Where dwindling red was overcome
By grey - they are long gone!