Day 13 of Poetry Month

I’ve written a number of poems based on the works of Robert Bateman, a Canadian landscape painter, who also includes animals. Some of these are available on this blog. We have a number of his books and a signed print of his “Mossy Branches”, on which today’s attempt is based.

Mossy Branches – Spotted Owl , 1999

                For Robert Bateman

Cool stillness
Mossy branches
Big eyes that see all
even that which cannot be seen by you nor I.
Big eyes that survey the temperate rain-forest
disappearing
disintegrating
        dissolving into
                stumps,
broken, dying conifers
returning to the earth.

No longer seeing unbroken tracts of forests
in which to fly,
where predators come in and
        the spotted owls die out.

© Catherine Woods 2017