' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' You With Your Fresh Thoughts Care For... (For Amandip) Poem by Dónall Dempsey

The tree
undresses itself

shyly sheds its leaves

stands naked
in the setting sun

its golden clothes
about its feet.

She cries
for what she sees

as the death
of the tree.

I put her
on my knee.

Kiss her
sobbing head

whisper words
of comfort

into her tangle
of golden curls.

Later, from the table
the sellotape dispenser

appears to have gone
missing

leaving behind an emptiness
where it should have been.

I smile to see
each golden leaf

returned to
the lower branches of the tree

clumbisly sellotaped
back in place.

'Tree better now! '
she seriously tells me

as starlings
swoop & sweep

across a sky.


*******


I guess this is my modern updat of Fr. Hopkins's SPRING AND FALL: TO A YOUNG CHILD which I have loved ever since I first encountered it as...a child. Little did I think then that I would live my own version of it years later with my little girl. I used to say this poem to her to make her go to sleep...she didn't understand the words but loved the tone and the fall of the words.


I guess(I am doing a lot of guessing!) that I had in mind also....one of the first haiku I ever fell in love with....Moritake's beautiful little peice of real magic as the fallen flower floats back to the branch.


The poem is dedicated to Amandip because of her constant kindenesses and her smile which lights up even the darkest corner.


Spring and Fall: To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins


*******

Moritake's most famous poem:

The falling flower
I saw drift back to the branch
was a butterfly