Silver Birch Poems

I have often lived and walked in areas profuse in Betula pendula - silver birch trees - and my current Calder Valley stamping grounds are no exception.  This summer, for obvious reasons, most of my rambles have been within a few surrounding miles of home, and I've been getting to know certain birch-rich woodland patches on my own doorstep more closely. I've also, by virtue of working form home, been spending a lot more time than usual directly by my front window, which overlooks the canal at Sowerby Bridge, and its varied gallery of trees.  I found myself recently drawn to the copse of silver birches that form part of this woody fringe, and writing about them.  Before sharing the poetry this prompted, I'd like to begin with an older piece, written in 2008 and inspired by my walks through the woodlands on the edge of Roundhay Park in Leeds.  February Birches was later published in my 2014 pamphlet Random Journeys. To say I feel at home among these trees, almost ever-present in my life, there is, to say the least, a definite sense of foreboding in my observations of them from that winter of 12 years ago!

FEBRUARY BIRCHES

Convex khaki structures

split into wriggling abundances

of limbs, frost-bitten fingers,

lean toward me like suggestions.

Its almost unbelievable

that they withstand their body weight -

up-surging Prehistoric Gods,

declarations of fertility…

flags impaled in clay,

ridged villages of larvae,

balconies of blackbirds

stretching skywards, earthwards.

Wrinkled, knotted, twisted crowns

colonised by armies of black balls,

throbbing, crackling like artillery,

the fierce overtures of crows.

If you stand and stare

at masses of bare flowerless wires,

interlacing cables, taut sinews

and machinery

seasick claustrophobia

can close in and enmesh,

and all that's left to do is watch

as branches clatter,

trees leering like huge, acid-spiked

demented spiders.

This summer, my birch-inspired scribbles have been somewhat more sedate, perhaps a testament to the security of familiarity amid times of trouble.

SILVER BIRCH COPSE

Like spines of dusty books,

they line the towpath

in flinty, chipped, thin strips

of warty white,

imprinting Scandinavian stories

on a Yorkshire morning's

slatey rain.

Untidy statues,

bark peeling

with all the clumsy crinkling

of memories,

their kind rooted 

on these hills

when the glaciers were melting;

quietly mighty, they drip

with time's assurances,

merge into a beautiful mess 

of overhanging leaves and branches.

Buoyed by the beauty of the birches, I have also been jogged into jollier jottings:

BIRCHES

Ash-fat fags, 

icing-sugar white,

brown-blotched, 

like the fossilized necks

of Arctic giraffes,

they bend in wind 

as if about to tipple over,

precarious candles, 

their snow-like flames

bleach the woods 

in a ghostly wash of stark, 

bark-darkened frost,

wobbling maypoles ranged

in clumpy copses, regular

as clockwork and stoic as Stone Henge. 

Silver birches are of enormous ecological value, providing habitats and food for many species of birds, insects, fungi and other life, and as we enter the final weeks of this most unusual summer, I am still drawing solace from these softly coloured, gentle giants, and it is reassuring to know that they will be there as we turn the corner toward an uncertain autumn.

SILVER BIRCHES

Sad stalagmites, 

they reach forlornly 

from my window, pale

above the gleaming wet

greenery of ferns, and rickety

as limbs of Victorian orphans, 

like chimneys starved of smoke

they sway in summer breezes,

beneath a sky of dish-wash grey,

and I'm drawn in by the cold, bleak

beauty of their bony ballet.