Treasure Trove
Hoards of coins in shallow graves,
Unlawful death of wealth –
An inquest must be called
To let the gold announce itself.
The coroner shall ascertain
The trove’s identity,
And whether misadventure
Caused its current liberty.
Was it witness to a conflict ?
Was it lost or laid to rest ?
Do we need an autopsy
To open up its chest ?
It seems at odds with all their other tasks,
It must be said –
But it surely makes a pleasant change
From dealing in the dead.
The Cherry, Then
Sweet cherry, bird cherry,
British since the glacier –
White of flower, red of berry,
Showing Spring is on the merry
With their blossoms looking very
Much the lacier.
And yet our folklore shrugs and mocks
Our modern-day delight.
Did Stonehenge mark the equinox
As cherry petals blew in flocks ?
Did Boudicca manoeuvre and out-fox
From woods of white ?
Did Patrick banish Irish snakes
From out of trees so halcyon ?
Did Alfred burn the cherry cakes,
Or Sherwood sport such dancing flakes,
Or Shakespeare pine on ruddy aches,
Throughout old Albion ?
The Japanese have celebrated long
The bloom before the leaf,
But Europe only saw a throng
Of messy trees not worth a song.
Was Easter’s shadow just too strong,
Or blossoming too brief ?
There is some talk of a local tradition in the Chilterns of using cherry blossom braches to decorate churches at Easter, though I can’t find any Pre-Victorian sources to indicate how old this is.
So the only legitimate references I can find to cherry blossom (as opposed to the fruit) in British culture is in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale: “As whit as is the blosme vpon the rys.” ‘Rys’ is a Middle-English word for ‘branch’, so no individual tree is specified – and neither is a particular season in the Tale, not that it would really matter for the metaphor anyway. But the very first line of the General Prologue mentions April, so the Miller and his audience would have been on their pilgrimage at the perfect time to appreciate any roadside displays. And what other native British tree has flowers worth a poet’s attention beside the cherry and it’s close relatives like blackthorn or apple ?
Judas Trees
Judas hanged himself, we’re told,
But from which tree in the potter’s field ?
Some say Elder, pagan and bold,
And some say Cercis bore his yield.
The Elder is likely the tale that’s old,
Though the Bible has the facts concealed.
Cercis may be a later rod,
So did logistics bring its birth ?
For the Elder presence is rather odd,
As a shrub which lacks both height and girth –
So the one who kissed the face of god
Must sway just inches from the earth.
The True Cross
The Romans built their crosses
Out if any local wood –
Roughly sawn and bluntly joined,
They needn’t be too good.
Growing full of nail-holes
And bloodstained, as a rule,
When used and used again, until they rotted,
Then hacked-up for fuel.
If Jesus ever lived, if Jesus died
Upon those wooden piers,
Those planks would carry-on their work,
Outlasting him by years.
Some say cedar, some say cypress,
Relics for a coronation.
All are wrong – the Cross was built
From our imagination.
Fish on Friday
The Catholics do it ev’ry Friday,
Or so they often claim,
The Protestants, only during lent,
Attempt to do the same.
While unbelieving heathens such as I
May join-in, if we wish,
But just as an excuse, in the event,
To share some tasty fish.
We only seem to think of it in my day,
Just as Easter comes.
But still, the start of the weekend is well spent
In batter or golden crumbs.
The Witherness of the Fig-Tree
Fruit was demanded, out of season,
Before the wasps had arrived.
A prophet cursed you, for no reason,
Except that he was denied.
Why so passive-aggressive that day ?
Why was he out to settle a score ?
Or did he just take your life away,
To be a metaphor ?
Was it power or wine made him drunk ?
Yet, after his magic tricks,
The Romans took your withered trunk
To make them a crucifix.
Hemlock
Catastrophic carrots that will help us see the dark
As it swallows us if we should swallow them.
Surprisingly accessible in any unkempt park
With its toxins and its bloody-mottled stem.
As if a mutant celery our negligence has freed,
Or some parsley of the never-to-be-sprigged,
There’s nothing that’s angelica about this devil’s weed –
Best not sup upon what Socrates has swigged.
The water hemlock, or cowbane, is an equally-deadly cousin in North America, but the pine trees with the stupidly-identical name have nothing to do with it. They were just judged at one point to smell the same, and nobody it seems ever slapped them round the face and told them to stop being so damned confusing for no good reason.
Funerary Minimums
The cemetery’s too egalitarian these days,
Nobody is building family tombs –
Just rows and rows of polished slabs which rigidly obey
All the ordinances for their little room.
Terraces of back-to-backs, each equal to its peers,
With nothing special here to mark our way,
Where ordinary folk have come to wile away the years,
And once they’ve settled-in, they’re here to stay.
The cemetery’s far too lacking temples, forts, and caves –
We need some wider plots and grander stones –
But not for just the wealthy to enrich their flashy graves,
While we others cram in boxes full of bones.
We need some council monuments, apartment blocks for all,
Where we lie down with our neighbours, mixed and matched.
To give some more variety for those beyond the pall,
Who have spent their lives in communes, not detached.
That’s right, I spelled ‘wile away’ without the H. It was deliberate, to enrage the pedants with my cunning whiles.
Hidden Eyes
English sheepdogs, Highlands cattle,
Marbled corneas in snakes,
Stalk-eyed snails with pop-up headlights,
Caterpillar eyespot fakes.
Staring cameras tend to rattle,
Black-walled, with a glossy sheen –
So mask them, yet still feed them light,
With eyes that see yet can’t be seen.
So wear a pair of shades ? Sure, that’ll
Make all nature look so cool…
If only ancient life had bred right,
We’d now be inscrutable !
Vision is a constant battle,
How to let the photons in ?
Yet we all see the infrared light
Not through eyes, but through our skin.
Righteous & Right
All I ever heard in church was
“God agrees with me”.
How they were right and I was wrong, cos
“God agrees with me”.
No matter what the subject,
What the decade,
What the town –
This world was full of sinners,
And they all were going down !
If only we would listen
To each humble, pious gent –
For only they could understand
What Jesus really meant !
No matter how opposing were their views,
Old God would not refuse –
He’d back them up – he always does –
Their pocket referee.
So all I ever learned it church was
“God agrees with me !”
Rhyming Couplets 