This is a new* slant. Whoever you think you’re writing to shapes the nature of your communication. I talk about this a lot in classes. Are you addressing your dead father? Your mother? Your children, your critics, your neighbours? Who? Often many people at once. Your divinities, too. In this one, I’m talking directly to myself. It seems like I have a lot of things to remember, here on the deathbed of modernity.
* this is a joke. I’ve been writing to myself since I was 17. It’s most poet’s way into the craft, after all.
But, this is a piece I started at the kitchen table yesterday before I managed to break through the membranes of resistance to get into the woods. It was worth it. Of course it was worth it. It always is. Every fucking time. It seems like I’m slow to remember this vital fact, despite believing that I remember. I’m not nearly as wise or clever as I wish I was, or as I used to think I was. It’s perplexing.
While I was sitting on the edge of a cairn there in the woods, basking in the afternoon sun, two birds flew so fast and close to my ear from behind me that for a moment I thought it was a low-flying fighter jet. At first I guessed they must have been hawks, but I think they were just pigeons living their best life. It was a gorgeous wild rush. And, all afternoon, I didn't feel the need to tell *anyone* on social media they were a fucking idiot.
Anyway, never mind the back-story: here’s the writing.
(But, also, if you’d like to come along to my regular poetry workshop - the Feral Angels’ Poetry Café - on Wednesday, it’s online, free-or-donation, and you’d be very welcome. We’ll be working on a form I came up with a few years ago called The Three-Tide Tenner. Find out more in my most recent newsletter here or go straight to registering here.)
Note to myself in the woods · #1 of march 2025
You’ll have to become a forest poet
to survive in the world of mirrors.
The fascinating reflections
will borrow the strength of your soul
will leave your words hollow
unless you can fill them again
with the moss and granite /
the draped lichen in the hawthorn /
the way the light catches the ash bark
or the pale ghost-faces of the birch
The words need to ring
with the dew-thick hazel’s catkins
or the sea of treetops as you look
out across the green hill.
One force draws you to the woods
another force to the thin world.
Where is your allegiance today?
Allow the green sea to fill you;
allow the green knife to pare away
everything that is not true.
We cannot go back
but the green knife is still sharp
and what is true in the forest
remains true in the mirror-world /
remains true, even on the clear-cut hill.
Put away the mirror-box.
Take one step today
towards the trees.
Thank for the reminder to get out into the woods. The struggle is weirdly real.
Ohh goodness, you touched my wild heart ✨