The Hollow Places

The eye's dark amber, yet moonstruck, half-crazed.

Pull back... see ears flat. Acknowledge the Hare.

A visionary message unread. Dazed,

I reach out, touch wood - and now I can hear.

"Go," says the Oak, "into the hollow places."

Hare-struck, oak-struck, blind - the spring light's too bright -

stumbling through thorns, all falls softened by moss

and the dank dark soil, its promise of night,

when scars stay unseen and shades can sheathe us -

the sweet safe darkness of the hollow places.

Find a form to fit a better being.

Not bringing to light but diving deep in.

Ideas take root in still small spaces.

The moonstruck wood-wisdom of hollow places.

On the Reserve this week, I twice saw hares. One was the size of a springer spaniel, she seemed. Lying in the corner of a field, folded into a box, ears flat and eyes white-rimmed. The other was grazing on a track and sat up when I turned the corner. She ran a few paces toward me. Stopped. Watched. Turned, ran back and into the trees. I followed her path to an oak.

He was quite mature and his bark looked healthy, but he'd shed two high branches and one low one was half broken though still in leaf. On branches and trunks, many sproutings of epicormic shoots. All this suggests stress. He was not waterlogged - and besides, many oaks on the Reserve have their feet in the water some of the time. And he seemed too close to the water to have suffered so much drought stress. Shade might have been an issue - but it shouldn't have been - he was the tallest tree in his patch.

Maybe he just wasn't happy there.

Place is important. Space only becomes place when beings live well there. A glance, and you sense the mood: is this a place conducive to being or is it not? Is this a space, simply, where life takes root but fails to flourish?

The places, the lovely places like those Ancient Woods, such a contrast to all the man-made spaces. And yet they are owned and fenced off.

How can we expect humans to feel part of place when all they are allowed is insufficient space?

Poem revised: 28.05.23

The eye's dark amber, yet moonstruck, half-crazed.

Pull back... see ears flat. Acknowledge the Hare.

A visionary message unread. Dazed,

I reach out, touch wood - and now I can hear.

"Go," says the Oak, "into the hollow places."

Hare-struck, oak-struck, blind - the spring light's too bright -

stumbling through thorns, all falls softened by moss

and the rich black soil, its promise of night,

when scars stay unseen and shades can sheathe us -

the secure darkness of the hollow places.

Find a form to fit a better being.

Not bringing to light but diving in deep.

Ideas take root in still, small spaces.

The moonstruck wood-wisdom of hollow places.