--- Creative Writing on Wild Landscapes by Angela Abraham ---

Stain-glass leaves were dayshine’s cat’s eyes, glowing bright though bathed in light. Tapetty tap, how they tapped so sweetly in arboreal air as if from it music would come. Though they seemed an infinitude as numerous as springtime rain, they were the tree and thus were one. Even the forest they say is one, no matter the size, even those many mountains broad, for they are connected in the earth via a living network, via fungi spreading as a synapses. One and many, many and one, from leaves to trees to forest and fungi - the semantics of numeracy aside, this place was Annie’s cathedral. 

September 2024

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A bonhomie, a boogaloo, a bouncing skip-a-doodle-doo: that was spring in Willow Woods. The trees were born to boogie-on to a music mankind can’t sense, though some say it is the soul’s miracle-grow. They sing it in aromas so earthy-sweet. Their bark-braille-breeze hums as back-up singers. Yesteryear’s leaves cheer them on with an occasional pom-pom flutter. Lichen and fungi blush brighter. Birds chitter-chatter amid the green polka-dot skies, amid the buds that open into dappled sunny-sighs. 

September 2024

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The chattering brook did coddle the wild roses with tales of merriment. Upon escaping the walled garden, upon outgrowing the gardener’s shears, the blooms bounded into the woodland’s sweet company. Grow! Grow! They sang in choir fashion, yet more as a raucous sea shanty. “Was there ever a floral party so gay, so gay, as where grows the wildest rose? Was there ever a floral party so gay, so gay, as where grows the wildest rose? No! No! Never there was, so let in the wildest rose!”

September 2024

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The Opening Door
 

Kitten soft light cradles Lore’s lion paws,
Whisker-rays thread Yesteryear’s tomorrow,
Newborn fauna is steel to dusty claws,
Bluebell scent soothes Warrior’s soft-sorrow,
Church-pane leaves gaze-loving from arbor limbs,
Forest dapples as God-sent heartbeat-kiss,
Willow-wands whisper of Lamb’s pasture hymns,
Grave shadows yawn longer to reminisce,
Sentinel dale-walls as lyrical runes,
Bakery aromas hug hilly-breeze,
Daisy, clover and buttercup tunes,
Serenading nymph to dragonfly ease,
Bitter-sweet the maturing angel-core,
Christ’s armour warms at the opening door.
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May 26, 2026, Found in Sweet 'n' Salty Poems, Collection One.

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As the long summer days linger in our memories, nature rests her rainbow palette. In their place she brings out the colours of beach and woodland, soothing us into a quiet reflection. We walk through pictures shown so beautifully by the winter sun; each as bathed in love as the one before. Be it the blue of sea or sky, or every shade of brown from almost white to almost black, it brings a peaceful harmony. Yet in this choir of colours, mother nature keeps by a little green, a little red, for the holly tree, the evergreens and robins. And after this rest, this deep breath of cool fresh air, we are ready for the sweet mischief of spring.

September 2024

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To wander a moor is an enchantment that both warms and chills, and that day was no different. Within the desolation, within a wintry wind, heather blossoms leapt as bonny flames. The sun hugged low to the hills, either rising or setting, I can’t recall which. You’d think I would, wouldn’t you? Because that is the day we met, he and I. Upon that silver-green expanse, so kissed with ‘top of the rainbow’ hues, his silhouette grew in detail. As our eyes met, my lungs took in the fresh air to maximum and my heart gained a lively rhythm. 

September 2024

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Simon picked his way over the rocky path, both his ankles pulsing with pain.  The scree ribbon twisted over hills that had not borne grain for generations.  All it gave was dust to any wind cruel enough to scream. His eyes were set on the horizon, on a lonesome tree, its sparse leaves becoming a mid-summer dandruff. He trudged, his footsteps with neither accompaniment of birdsong nor floral scent.

September 2024

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We’d been in the darkness for time out of mind. Twisted trees grew with such a density that no dapple of light shone. To travel a circle, or to travel a straight line, all was the same in the dinge and gloom. A bird of warning, a bird of song, each chilled the nerves as much. Breathing fast and shallow, we startled at mice as much as bears. With lungs of stagnant air, with shoes a sorrowful drench, even our songs were a warp of what once they’d merrily been.

September 2024

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The quarry was a rocky pit no longer. The once granite faces were alive with waving fronds. Their foliage, as years passed, was becoming earth with a freckling of flowers. In their time they too would become the soil and, in more time still, we’d be standing upon a new meadow. The tincture of nature will become a bathing aroma. The ground will regain its natural cushioning. 

September 2024

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From high altitude the lake was a blue spot in endless mountain grey-greens; yet with feet on the ground it was a poet’s daydream. The air was a hum of dragonflies, the grass a riot of asters and, in a wide arcing circle, grew softly waving evergreens. In the seasons of ambient air, the fragrance of that valley was a timeless fingerprint. It spoke of days centuries past in the same whisper as Future’s promise. It was our sanity, that place, in a world of mad-hatters.

September 2024

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