Oh in the deep blue night
The fountain sang alone;
It sang to the drowsy heart
Of a satyr carved in stone.
The fountain sang and sang
But the satyr never stirred—
Only the great white moon
In the empty heaven heard.
The fountain sang and sang
And on the marble rim
The milk-white peacocks slept,
Their dreams were strange and dim.
Bright dew was on the grass,
And on the ilex dew,
The dreamy milk-white birds
Were all a-glisten too.
The fountain sang and sang
The things one cannot tell,
The dreaming peacocks stirred
And the gleaming dew-drops fell.

High above the ultra-white plateau
a vultures wheels in an amino helix
above a dead horse. Branded upon its left flank is the word
“Mulatto”.
In the forest far below
an ilex rattles for the dead.
The river, pregnant with shrapnel
sulks and stagnates, her belly full of lead.
The plains are cratered as the Moon
the purple heather soothes the raw stone wound
and whispers that the fighting will be over
very soon, and all the scars will heal.
Their fires have turned our bones to meal.

The mountain gods are sighing now
and dying now, the endless sky their tomb.
Rainclouds loom, seething with disdain
and seek to quench the hungry yellow grass.
Rain lashes through the mountain pass.

Rainwater sifts into the soil
and we do not forget.
Blood chapel-sacred, black as oil
and we do not forget.
Shrapnel is sown like seeds into the spoil
and we do not forget.

your salix for dreaming
under fagus for swinging
on platanus for shading
beneath juniperus for grieving
about quercus for remembering
with liriodendron for reaching
above prunus for sweetening
up pinus for smelling
around ilex for hiding
behind acer for uplifting
your heart
tree

When holly grows, she takes years to start,
a slow process,
but nonetheless,
I look forward to the sight of the plant.

The fact that she grows all the year long,
should only stand,
fiercely strong and,
potent that all life can be prolonged.

Whatever brought by Summer and Spring,
Winter, Autumn,
any season,
through hell and high water, she will grow.

Plant, person, or people you may be,
life enacts growth,
so long as known,
by us. So here's to another tree

       grown from ground (in slōth)
       so all gape and see,
       the power of growth
       in Ilex: Holly.