Mary Honychurch
‘The sacred trees in the woods
which they called Nimidas’
(Attrib., St Boniface)
Following the latest storm
many urging sprigs will flourish from the acorns
on Taw bank’s mother tree -
near the place the river winds, where stumps –
so many disappeared firs and oaks
now prostrate amongst brick and ash –
are supplicants for termites, havens
for bats in cracks and fissures, for owl and kingfisher -
but illuminating saplings there are already a plenty
dotted on the bank above the curve of the river
that roots in grassy dips in Middle Down, & Long Ham,
fields splicing the hedges by the henge
hidden in the folds of land between the dozen hedgerows –
- there where the rolling valley
Nymetboghe river ebbs and flows
next where the road laid by the legion ran west
to Nemetotatio – some from oak offsets
planted alongside Den Brook, Shepherd’s Lake
and other streams feeding Taw and Yeo -
there are even saplings near the Holy Well
and in the corner by the blackthorn copse
where the newest lamb totters to bond at his mother’s teat.
Some have drifted east from the newly resurrected grove,
grandly named by greedy sellers, Poet’s Wood.
****
Escaping the car I walk the hedge perimeters –
the path footfalls of the land
from where I come and
will belong again –
look and listen to the trees in meadow’s green sunlit space,
where long-disputed dryads
sparkle in shade’s unfurling leaves -
the white bobs of rabbits, initiates,
disappear -
the copse rustling into hedgerow dusk.
Mary Honeychurch is here.
Disguised in the sweet oak glade
her fair turn of head
her tiny, virtual sandalled feet
her angel avatars silver in the undertow
of the wired world repeating
in river’s glistening mirrors,
the rhizocretions deep planted.
Down in the village the youngest children
singing, jigging home from nursery
glance up distracted from their fidget,
forget an instant their mother’s voice,
green-spun spinning tops, within –
****
Here, according to the testaments
crowing over litigated lands
your father built his gold reserves, then left his bequest-
the aged, the needy, poor people of Bow -
following his death, on quiet days
you tiptoed into church’s interior
gazed at the exquisite floral screen,
the bosses and fern-leaves on the wagon roof,
rood screen’s fruiting vines.
Mary, this is how you came to me
your family threaded by the holy tree –
the sacrifices at dawn, or dusk,
when under the patient oaks
detritus leaf carpet fashioned from the gale
thunder recast you, following the latest storm.
Julie Sampson‘s poetry is widely published and she’s been placed in a variety of competitions. Sampson edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems (Shearsman, 2009). Her collections are: Tessitura (Shearsman, 2014); It Was When It Was When It Was (Dempsey and Windle, 2018) and Fivestones (Lapwing Publications, 2022). See www.juliesampson.com
Amethyst Review 