Jock Stein: “Beech in Sunshine”

Below is another poetic feature from Jock Stein whom we earlier featured here.

He begins with a short introduction to his newest 14-line poem with a closing reflection.

Enjoy.

And thank you, Jock!

25.7  Beech in Sunshine

A few years ago I wrote a spate of ‘beech sonnets’ about the magnificent beech tree we inherited in the middle of our garden – some were published in Swift. I wrote another this year while the branches were bare and the thermometer low:

Arms accelerate akimbo,

beech bare on blue,

frozen fountain of resource

and praise, today on cue

to give the world a show:

that twisted tangled limbs

may share a single source

that grows these uncut hymns

to God and nature, with no

shame in naming them

together, root and rhizome

deep in soil and say-so

to the shape of trunk and stem

and leaf and bark and poem.

Last week at Shore Poets (they meet in Edinburgh’s Waverley Bar once a month) I met a French student who was doing an exchange at Heriot-Watt university.

She asked me what kind of poems I write – a question I find really hard to answer.

So many contemporary poets seem to put together a stream of consciousness from worlds I don’t inhabit, without any kind of craft to them. But I don’t think I write traditional poetry either, although I do like a bit of rhyme that’s not too obvious…