Entering the Palatine Forest Sea
mainly filled with beeches, among the trees
in staggered spacing from canyon corridors
to tunnels of a settlement, our society
symbolized beneath the spectacle, shrouded
spider-webs, crickets screeching leg friction,
eight and six-legged creatures gnawing
large holes in beech tree leaves shaping sky-light
windows, sun speckles through the ozone layer
down to the forest floor where sweet Himalayan
blackberry bramble thickets of barbed wire
are barricading the flesh of fruits. Forest clearings
find Scotch Brooms worshipping, seeking the sun,
sweeping other seedlings aside while toxic
Western Bracken Ferns stretching tall
before sprawling along the tree column corridor edge
where the oaks, Norway maples, beaked hazelnuts
stand tall next to century-old Scot Red Pines split
from late April’s heaped snow and May’s hail shell-waves,
while short-toed treecreepers amid green foliage echoes
code about foreigners. My son swings a dead stick
at a white, purple-patterned butterfly, skipping wind
as a daffodil’s helicopter seed, my boy batting out.
I keep him from dark corners, from flowers
shining Celandine to drowse, from Lily of the Valley
to fatally let blood cells sleep, following the doorway
path located where the lavender azaleas climb.
In Kirckenbach
the frost has not yet faded
though, the finches are still
at chorus. The lakes linked
together are half-glazed
with crackled ice, leaving
crystal patches to paint
the pictures mirroring trees
abreast the lakes in winter
statue-shapes awaiting
their colors, the warm hues
to return from paleness
of surgery, I feel winter
is in sync with me, seeking
fresh buds, adoring
cherry blossoms trees
to chase in Mainz,
for my reawakening, shedding
the skin of self-torment,
feeling a snake’s new pattern,
slimming, on this slithering path
that seeks the sun
in this valley, endowing heat rays
to soften skin hairs,
and not just to shine
as it does now. Each step
is a sponge of sounds,
the woodsman, an architect
of light, clearing tree-form
views with a chainsaw; the voices
of echoing children sitting
at a stone carved table
in cheery disposition munching
a fruity lunch; revving rollerblades
and ski poles push a couple.
The Trees Are Perturbed
this April. The sun’s warmth
hoodwinked them, layers, coating
comfort at their roots with enough
rain showers to shoot leaf buds,
awaken blossoms, spring
eve’s daffodils shining, reciprocating
the sun’s smile. The branches
no longer the bare sieve, filtering
winter’s wrestling play:
winter’s icicles, crystalized paint
drops, winds blustering tug of war
with their breaths. Each tree
sprouted with small spoon pockets,
now shocked by shifting currents,
developed in darkness,
thunder’s African drum
communicating the lightning flash
shining a snow blanket sweltering
from the sky. The spoon leaves
on trees catching wet weighing snow,
bending as a bird’s feather
stitched between each thread, tree
trunks now arcs, branches breaking,
the breaths lost in a viral season,
abuse from a love-thought broken
heart. The forest is suffering—
snapped by an atmosphere
adapting in human hands.
Author’s Biography
Mervyn Seivwright writes to balance social consciousness & poetry craft for humane growth. He is a nomad from a Jamaican family, born in London, England, and left for America at age 10, now residing in Schopp, Germany. He is a Spalding University MFA Grad and has appeared in AGNI, American Journal of Poetry, Salamander Magazine, African American Review, & 64 other journals across 11 countries, receiving recognition as a 2021/2023 Pushcart Nominee & Voices Israel's Rose Ruben Poetry Competition Honorable-Mention. His new collection “Stick, Hook, and a Pile of Yarn,” is available through Broken Sleep Books (https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/mervyn-seivwright-stick-hook-and-a-pile-of-yarn).
Link: https://www.clippings.me/mervynseivwright
Socials: https://www.facebook.com/deep.cobra
