For Glen Russell - Sign Painter and Wood Carver

There once was a yew tree felled by a storm 
its stumpy roots washed downstream by the flood
from the bank of the glen where it stood firm
till a carver found it looking for wood

who saw in it the shape of a dryad
he liberated so she would swim free
made a woman whose beauty struck all glad
breasting a swirling stream loosed from a tree

that had once shaded a sheltered rock pool
where his muse bathed naked giving delight
now an antique on top of a dresser
glowing with golden tones in the sunlight

time has settled in chiseled grooved ripples

dust's been wiped from bare shoulders neck and face

love tenderly touched her breasts' brown nipples

as she swims forever away with grace.


Richard M Russell (C) Dick Russell
            December 29, 2022

 A December Valentine

Upon you I’ve cast my roving eye
Let me summon the power to step across time 
Turn into a swan you’ll fly from and fall
Faint from a blow from my long neck
On a riverbank pinioned by wings
Just as Yeats described what Erato told him
About Zeus begetting Helen raping Leda 

A swan assaulted you?
You’ll have no proof you were touched
Except these words I’ve sent
You are as beautiful as they

Now long years older
I am still guilty of desire
Zeus is no excuse.

Richard M Russell © Dick Russell
                December, 2022

 Ode to Imagination

 
I’ll take your hand and we’ll dance plein air
through lush wide landscapes along a path
leading we know not where, nor do we care
for over the horizon our future waits

we'll reinvent ourselves
take new parts on stage not knowing the words
act the parts we chose

young lovers masked with clever disguise
made to look old except for their eyes
now hand in hand entering a garden

falling water glinting in sunlight
icicles sparkling on the fountain
frost on the cedars
two ravens calling

Richard M Russell (C) November 22nd. 2022

Lament

So let the piper make his drones lament

find the music for words best unsaid

that say she’s gone that say she’s dead

but she is not gone she is here instead

in my arms as we dance together

gazing into each other’s eyes

that time I stumbled with surprise

finding I’d suddenly realized

red faced stupid adolescent

what love is

and now I’ll cry 

and now I’ll grieve 

so let the piper start the drone’s lament

unsay those words that say she’s dead

let her music herald spring 

let her elope once more from Death

dance winter into spring 

with her young love

give birth to summer

let the piper raise our hearts and welcome in

another year another harvest to begin.

I’ll walk the path we trod before that led us through the woods

to where we crossed Chirdon Burn where it dropped two feet as it rushed 

on to the north fork of the river Tyne where we stepped over boulders

big standing firm against the stream that splits off the Cleugh right there

near Goat Linn where there’s a spring coming from Roughside 

with a two-gallon canister in each hand fetching water from a stream.

By Chirdon Burn I’ll wander where my love and I once walked

alone except for a birdwatcher’s hut by water’s edge where we talked.

And that was where she went no further for she wanted to go on from me

we’d passed a full-fledged tawny owl being mobbed by birds in a tree.

No, you can’t keep it, it’s wild, set it free She’d taken it anyway back to our bothy

from the drystone wall where she found it. We kept it and fed it and then it flew free.

From Allerybank we’d found her from Roughside near enough

was it her, songbirds were trying to kill in the valley of the Cleugh?

Leaves moving in time pluck melodies from the breeze 

she tamed wild birds and played with foxes

so let the piper make his drones lament

as he fingers notes for words best unsaid that say you’ve gone that say you’re dead

and gone and now I’ll cry and now I’ll grieve walking the path we walked instead

Richard M Russell © Dick Russell

      August 2022

The Spring

he practices casting words as feet
that will adhere
to meaning
catch a trout
catch the fame he seeks

 

what he writes now
he hopes will stay
if only clinging like lichen to rock
by that spring where she bent to hold a pail
right beside a blackbird’s nest
the blackbird did not move

 

there are many springs but none like Brard
not far from Merwin's place unless maybe Roughside's
an outcrop piercing the moor in the sloping hillside
above a stream they called the Cleugh which rhymes with rough
where grass grew thickly and curlews cried 

 

each step down the hillside strengthened entrancement
for a gaunt tree stood alone among deer cropped grasses
clansmen raiding the Bower assembled here
to besiege Dally Castle in the stone tower days 
and spirits haunt that place. 


Richard M Russell (C) Dick Russell
                      August 2022