Wood's Hum [Poetry]

I crouched in wild garlic fields on a cool day -
Settled in the dark woods, they greenly nudged my boots
Nodded podded flower heads, a snowy bouquet
Praying to earth, under which white bulbs crowd, rooted

With ash, who twists upward through the muted shade
Releasing a resonant syllable in an entish tongue
Began decades gone, heard but once in this shadowy glade
Where I listened deep, and heard the hum

Of growing things - tail, claw, tooth and wing
The bees, home from the yellow meadow
The sigh of badgers, the robins darting song
And the drumming of the earth, quiet, soft and low.

Yesterday I was out walking for 9 miles of forest and fields, valleys and hills. I came across a beautiful forest glade, miles from anywhere, covered with wild garlic in resplendant flower. I thought of England's poets and the romantic descriptions of the English landscape in ballads, songs, poems and fairy tales. It's little wonder - the heart can but wax lyrical when walking in such beautiful country. In this forest, I came across a huge old ash tree, whose centre was hollowed out, and a wild rose grew on top of it's own strange roots. I felt compelled to put my cheek up against the cool bark of this tree and thought of how trees and the earth operate on different time to us. It seemed the tree was speaking to me, but of course, trees would speak slowly, wouldn't they, because they have all the time in the world. If I had another twenty years, I might have caught the first letter of the first word. Or perhaps all I was hearing was om - the sound of the universe, from the tip of the roots tangling with the bulbs of wild garlic and feeling into badger sets and interwined with worms and other insects, to the pale blue sky where kestrels and buzzards soared. Home, the forest said. This is home.