Auchterawe Wood

This is how it is in the word:
wind, water, wet, wood.

Filling, jurgling roll of stone,
bird needle, flute of bone:
this is how it is by ear.

Deep and dark.  Viridian.
Flash of splash of falling light:
this is how it is by eye.

Cheek of ice, feather breath,
spat of wet, fluff of glove:
this is how it is by touch.

Sharp sap, mulch and pine,
art of woodsmoke, O of nowhere:
this is how it is by nose and tongue.

The wind, the wood, and hand in hand:
this is how it is by heart.




* Founder-editor of HappenStance Press, Helena Nelson was a joint Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize winner with Starlight on Water (Rialto, 2003). She has since self-published two light-verse pamphlets. Her second book-length collection, Plot and Counter-Plot (in which this poem appears), was published by Shoestring Press in 2010.