feel my strength return

for next year’s flowering.

Alison Chisholm

from Home Thoughts from Abroad

from Home Thoughts from Abroad

Oh, to be in England

Now that April’s there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough,

In England – now!

Robert Browning

A Slash of Blue

A Slash of Blue

A slash of Blue –

A sweep of Gray –

Some scarlet patches on the way,

Compose an Evening Sky –

A little purple – slipped between

Some Ruby Trousers hurried on –

A Wave of Gold –

A Bank of Day –

This just makes out the Morning Sky.

Emily Dickinson

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman

The Sensation of Well-Being

The Sensation of Well-Being

The sensation of well-being,

Which my heart from yours receives,

Is like the deep content a tree

Finds in its fresh green leaves.

Farrukhi

In the Tree’s Defence

In the Tree’s Defence

Trees are good at what they do,

at being oak or beech or yew.

They shake their leaves to make a breeze

and pop out blossom for the bees.

In crook of branch they’ll hold a nest

which, birds concur, is for the best.

On rainy days they shield the feller

who’s forgot his umbrella.

In summer they provide the shade

for picnickers out in the glade.

Inside their sturdy hearts of wood

trees are simply doing good.

A. F. Harrold

from Blueberries

from Blueberries

‘You ought to have seen what I saw on my way

To the village, through Patterson’s pasture today:

Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,

Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum

In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!

And all ripe together, not some of them green

And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen! . . .

‘You ought to have seen how it looked in the rain,

The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves,

Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves.’

Robert Frost

Beetroot

Beetroot

The beetroot is a bossy veg,

inside it’s deep maroon,

it comes into your kitchen

and paints the entire room.

The juice gets on your fingers,

the juice gets on the walls,

when you rinse your fingers –

a red Niagara Falls!

The beet leaps on the oven

and tells you what to do –

‘Bake me, boil me, grate me,

slice me with a knife,