The Song of Hazel Catkins on the Wind
Three poems celebrating the hazel catkin as a harbinger of spring.
The Song of Hazel Catkins on the Wind
Hear the song of hazel catkins on the wind.
Hear the song that catkins sing without a singer.
When the air is filled with pollen on the wing
we know that we approach the end of winter.
Hazel Notes
Buds brown or green
or even pink as a dawn sky
turning to lady flowers
bright and intense the catkins
as spring wakes up I take my notebook,
try to record the moment a grain
of pollen takes flight…
timing seems so important
these days when our time is not.
Grim are our masks to the hazel coupe.
Sometimes I fear to step near with
my armfuls of forebodings.
“These stakes are for planting
new saplings – we bring tree guards.”
The hazel spirits nod. Acknowledge
us into their space to share the sunshine
on the first warm February day.
Seascale Man
with your hazel walking stick,
walking along right foot,
left foot, tap
once a staff
your pale plaits floating
beside you and your fur cloak,
did you ever find what the Norse
called skali ‘shelter’?
Seascale, Windscale…
The shelters we build from
the sea and the wind and the nuclear bunkers
are not strong enough to guard against your ghost
who warned of the day rods could not be pulled from
the blaze and rivers ran white with milk,
who divined the radioactive pond.
I see you pale as leukaemia -
right foot, left foot, tap
once a staff
with catkins ripening
over winter to be dispersed
upon the wind like caesium, iodine, polonium,
seeking not death but small pink flowers.
There is little shelter left for ghosts,
but guest-law dictates
I take you in like Gwyn
did St Collen although he denied his hazel roots,
sit you down in a coupe upon a stool
and offer you a leafy shelter.
Lorna Smithers
is a poet, author, awenydd, Brythonic polytheist, and devotee of Gwyn ap Nudd. Her three books: Enchanting the Shadowlands, The Broken Cauldron, and Gatherer of Souls are published by the Ritona imprint of Gods & Radicals Press. Based in Penwortham, Lancashire, North West England, she is a conservation intern with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust and is learning to grow small green things and listen to the land. She blogs at ‘From Peneverdant’.