Under Trees

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

The dream was of words lost in woodland
amongst fulsome, grinning fairytale trees,
their twisted branches alive with an impossible horde
of infernal chattering crows with accusing yellow eyes;
I dreamed of words as sharp as shards of broken glass
muttering a selection of vacuous nothings beneath
too many hierarchical grinning trees
looming out of the rank primeval shade.....

“Catastrophe!” I cried, and beneath
the shade of the serried rows of grinning trees
I saw leather bound books torn open by invisible hands
where water dribbled softly over mossy boulders.
“Armageddon, you scarlet whore!” the trees replied.

A snail left the winding mark of time
across a long rotten log. I recall a moment
of curious peace, of almost set in resin stillness.
And then along came another grinning surprise,
a set of venomous jaws snapping like crocodile jaws
and yellow eyes heralding death in red letters
beside a placid pool full of writhing fat fishes
snapping lazily at mosquitoes.

Later wasps as carnivorous as wolves
spoiled our furious but nevertheless
memorable picnic. They sipped
from ruined flesh under the grinning trees
while sunlight shone delightedly through
the rippling green cathedral above,
dappling the turgid earth with tiny spatters of blood
from and unknown source. The snail saw it all,
the still enticing remnant of what might have been.
And then, under those fulsome, grinning fairytale trees
I saw a nest of torn pages rolling away
in the swiftly gathering breeze.