The Wilding Tree ~ a poem

Today, I met a wilding tree

that hid in green until her apples shone

and shone for me and called me there

called me onwards to the sea, a wilding me

walked on, in drifts of hemp agrimony

and wild carrot flowers unfurled in ordinary beauty.

Crow feathers marked the way,

enchanter's nightshade lined my path,

And cuckoo pint in shadowed green

made poison berry-bright the boundary

between me and the wild.

My wild, that answers to the prayer

of nettles for a kiss of skin

of blackberries for a tongue

the salt sea for a wound to sting

and start the healing song.

And I walk on, autumn-lipped with elderberry

dusty-bloomed with sloe, and willowherb

who draws her bow to set her seed-kin free

And then the sea, spun silver by the summer grey,

washes the memory of green away

with seagull-feathered spray

that salt-sings and wings the day to wild.

I rise, answer to the ebb and flow,

and on I go, returning to the green

where woodpecker feathers bless the way for me

and ivyed wrens cleave the wood with song,

and I go on, lifted by a surging tide

find haglets, rose hips, hazelnuts

that rain from squirrel-high.

This day of green and salt

has called me home

the sandstone hill, the silver spring below

the memory of badgers,

bone-blessings from the crows

My love is here, the kettle on

outside, the wilder me is spun

the wilding tree shines on.

(Jacqueline Woodward-Smith, 11^th August 2016)