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Catherine Baker


        Green Man in Midwinter

           Green Man’s bone weary.
           His breath stinks of ditchwater
           and half-bletted sloes.
           His cuffs are full of leaf mould.
           Frost tendrils snake through his beard.


           Fierce ice-rimed owl calls
           waken him grimly at dawn.
           There’s no rest for him –
           the world in its winter sleep
           turns inside his wakefulness.


           Rain slips down his neck,
           but Green Man keeps on walking.
           Nothing’s growing now
           but the kingdom of the dark.
           He’s beating the bounds for us,
​

           holding his lantern
           against the lowering sky,
           whistling tunelessly
           a song of hard-won patience,
           a song of the earth, turning.

                    ❦
Picture


​Catherine Baker's profile

     
​        Selected Haiku and Tanka


​
​no path climbs the hill 

except the one the wind makes  
whitening the grass 
​​

​geese in the orchard
pick over the bruised apples
better than nothing
in the blue light under clouds
at the low point of the year


thick rusty brambles
hide the snickets and tunnels
where the foxes run
liquid as the moonlight on
the telltale tips of their tails



​gulls body the wind
tilting through the leaf-spirals
in the fling of trees



​step outside and hear
the rain talking to itself
in the water butt

​
crowflight carves the air

in one elegant clean swoop
black over grey roofs


​Grey on grey, the wind

flings a handful of seagulls
from here to nowhere.

                                         More Selected Haiku and Tanka

​the space inside trees 
full of green shifting leaflight 
sliced through by finches 
with scimitar certainty 
in the quickening of spring

​
hope like a far hill
in the grey light of morning 
rising regardless


​the darkness of trees 
making a gift of the light 
in winter starkness 
framing their clear panes of air 
just these ones, always changing
​

​
​open the window 
and let the moonlight float in 
washing the linen



​how flimsy the fence 
that keeps me out of the wood
its firm intentions 
shouldered aside by badgers 
and ducked by the dancing hare


​darkness before dawn 
sliding off a wet slate roof 
the eye of the moon

​a tree made of air 
its flowers more green than white 
last visible thing
in the draining of the light 
its own ghost, water-scented


the first bumblebee
drunk on so little sunshine
blunders through the wood



​along the main road 
thorn trees step out of the mist 
pale and distracted 
their thoughts visible in clouds 
of cold blossom round their heads

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