Miscellaneous Plant Poems 2

---

Step upon step, bump after bump

Mushrooms growing up a stump

Marching all the way around

While making not a single sound

The only one who climbs that stair

Of slippery mushrooms, when he dares?

A teeny, tiny little elf

Hopping shelf to shelf to shelf

He climbs up to the tippy top

Careful not to slip and drop

Then sings a little Celtic tune

Beneath the brilliant summer moon

Mountainsides erupting in a riot, clothed in green

As springtime sweeps across a Pennsylvania roadside scene

Dogwood pinks, and apple trees, all covered up with white

Polka-dotted landscapes, a fantastic, surreal sight

Blending paint is not a skill that I have ever had

Nor spreading tints and hues across an artist's sketching pad

Nor laying out a scope, or drawing outlines at the start

All I know is something like that tugged upon my heart

A call to stare, and soak it in, not paint, but rather, feel

Foliage emerging, in the land that we call "real"

Pictures simply could not hold the rainbows I saw there

Gushing forth from living hillsides, flowing everywhere

Special rainbows, rare, for missing certain tints and hues

Heavy on the greens and yellows, shy on reds and blues

But arcs of vibrant greens, in countless waves of variation

Painted by the sprouting leaves of springtime vegetation

A hundred shades of green could not begin to capture this

A whirlwind filled with roiling, swirling bursts of leafy bliss

Laced with sunshine, mixed with shadows, spread across the land

Far horizons, one, with shrubs and trees quite close at hand

I heard the call, I stared, entranced, and dared to taste it all

Within my mind, where canvas stretched, and I began to fall

In love with inner paint which captured vivid spring-tree lands

An image I could never recreate with my own hands

Paintings of the mind are where it all starts, anyway

So if I never touch a brush, I'll still pretend to play

At artist-for-a-day, at Rembrandt, or, perhaps Monet

An easel, and a painting, green, within the month of May!

Greenish folds, rather like the ones that grace my brain

Across which my imagination flickers like a flame

If only moss could think like me

And use its thoughts to help the tree...

   Why do I play this never-ending, question-asking game?

I create new worlds inside, where I never have to face

The conflicts that accompany this noisome human race

I turn to nature's imagery

To find a door that sets me free

   Open to a universe, a very different place

Choosing words that rhyme, to mark the path that leads me there

Like breadcrumbs in a forest, standing out to show me where

To take the steps that I must take

To find a place where I can make

   My world. If folks don't like it, I don't care

Brain and tree, moss and bark, I'm glad you caught my eye

Ignited something in my mind, and set it free to fly

It's crazy, once the spark is lit

That all I have to show for it

   Are poems in a partly cloudy, sometimes stormy, sky

Green, green, lovely green

Algae, moss, stems, and leaves

And fern fronds in between

Green, green, lovely green

Seeds, thorns, sepals, roots,

And parts of plants not seen

Green, green, lovely green

A quiet Kingdom, keeping rocks

And air, and water, clean

Green, green, lovely green

And ruled by Chlorophyll, a kind

And tiny little Queen

Leafy lace,

Ferns in a vase

Hollow, good,

Gnarled wood

Fallen bole

Of a tree, with a hole

Green, green lace,

Ferns in a vase

How do you Swallow a Rock?

How do you swallow a rock, my friend?

You start by being a tree!

Then smile for decades and decades, and then

It just happens... try it... you'll see!

I Saw a Tree Eat a Rock

I saw a tree eat a rock, its mouth was gaping wide

At least, that's what I thought I saw; I thought it was the truth...

Then I stooped, got down low, and took a look inside

Then it struck me, I could see, that it was just a tooth!