Real and Unreal : Cloud Poem #2

A thumb of mist has smudged a line of trees
and the horizon far beyond until
we cannot easily distinguish them.


    Dark clouds
      worn threadbare like old clothes
   through which
         the sun slants down             Houses in a wavy line
            between the branches,        along the hills --
           combs the undergrowth.        they could be ships
                                             some lost among
                                       the folds of ocean.
     What treasures might be buried here beneath the waves?


The tablets of stone cracked and
           crumbled long ago.
   On silver birch
    white lichens grow like star fruit we could pick

                  
                The climate has
                      grown too extreme
                             for human beings now.

   Water
     tumbles down
        a rock formation,
 pools among the evergreens      A row of thin trees
 in which                      upright as a guard of honour.
 there perches                   From here 
          in his finest blues      they might be stick
     the Fisher King                 insects out
king fisher most remarkable       to catch us off our guard.
eyes boring holes                 
in watery murk.
He dives. 
Once. Twice. 
Has two fish in his beak,
before: a shiver of water and an arrow from a bow, he's gone,to leave  the colour as a trail of cobalt blue electric sparks. He, too, will    catch the likes of us off guard when he returns -- but from the        opposite direction!  


Real and unreal interact here
urge eyes to look
and minds to think 
 in other ways.   
                                           ploughed fields
                   Approach the hazels.     retain some snow
                     Trunks decorated      in speckle form
                   with more lichens     or furrowed rows --
Over to our left    (pale blue plaques       a lunar land   
a hazel wood        with small black         an artist
contributes           squiggles)tell --      tidied up
its own fuzz         or ought to tell --
to what is          of past celebrities
after all           who slept or lived
a fuzzy scene.       among these branches --
Branch and twig,        The hazel dormouse Muscardinus
how fine they are!        lived among these leaves.
How fine
the winter canopy!     
Brushes of              
camel hair                         Now undulating land,
to brush the sky               dips and grassy knolls.
ruffled                     Gnarled roots beneath the feet 
by the breeze.          suggest
                               it was not always so.
                           Clouds now like mountains
                           where was smudge before.