Green man carvéd stone
sacred plant marble human
fully inter-be

Green woman fresh leaf
soil sprung floral finery
lives dies continues

Green child woder full
apple spider web rain bow
potential genius

Stephanie Grant (for writing group 16.5.12)

we have been broken open
our walls torn down
by silent trumpets

in the world but not of it
yet it is within us
and has already reported

Rhiannon Grant

Rhiannon has been a regular contributor to this site for many years – if you like her poetry you might want to visit her own poetry blog called Unprogrammed Poetry

Graham is a green man, he isn’t pink or blue.
He really loves the planet and we should do so too.
He recycles all his rubbish in different coloured bins
and sorts it into plastics, paper, bottles and tins.

His compost heap is carefully planned
to add health and vigour to his land
teabags, peelings and mowings of the lawn
bulked up with newspaper – damp and roughly torn.

His vegetables are a picture, laid out in row upon row.
This takes him many a happy hour and makes a lovely show!
His little house is warm and inviting
with solar panels giving warmth and saving money, that’s exciting.

Graham has it written down, a natural burial would be the ticket
in meadow, wood or leafy thicket,
so that when he shuffles off this mortal coil
his body will disintegrate and thus enrich the soil!

Teresa Maxwell, May 2012

“Does the road wind uphill all the way?”
You’ll never reach the top,
The peaks are endless.
Going upstream, against the grain,
Uptight and restless, upstaging Sisyphus
(He’d be lost without rolling his boulder),
Keeping up with all the latest –
Upgrading, updating, up to the minute,
Uppity upstarts on the up-and-up
After one-upmanship.

Why all this upheaval, this uprooting?
Come down to the valley, where life is fertile;
Centre down; be still.
Be gentle and yielding!
Dare not to be ahead of others;
Be the valley of the universe!
The valley is whole and full.
The valley spirit never dies.

J.S., April 2012.
Lines in italics are from the Tao te Ching

A silence hangs.
Lull. Calm.

Wait the wind,
the moment of gathering.

Love, warm, gusting wind,
fill sails, full billow,
to loose the deep anchor
that, riding grief swells, holds a soul here.

The trusted force that comforts those behind
now sweep heart’s boat on
to cross the line
that binds and bounds this life.

Sail on to more pacific streams.

Ruth Shadwell