Author: Daniel Greenwood

Landscape photographer with a focus on woods and trees, fungi, and macro photography

In the Russian Wood

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I searched through the trees
in the Russian wood.
The bullish wren,
reciting from the brush.

The towers loomed
in the pale morning
air, spring waking
slowly in the green lawns,

and the chaffinch
showing in the elder.
He was soon to sing.
A Chinese woman threw

a ball to her baby boy,
he motored
after the rainbow-coloured
thing. His grandmother

floated in their wake,
the gentle manoeuvres
of a knowing,
loving mother to more

than her first,
and foremost.

© Daniel James Greenwood 2011

The Dripping Park

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The dripping park:
black and sodden cotton,
the brink of dark,
exultant, the dripping park.

I am speaking Russian –
‘Meenya zavoot Danila!’
and you are overawed like a child.
You reply fluently so I stop.

You move beneath a pink umbrella,
and in the near night I miss you.
The rain meets your curls,
your white cotton.

The dripping park:
black trees and shivering ponds.
Cars are fizzing on the outside.

You step into a hidden pool,
taking a tissue from your bag
you wipe your ankle down,
your hair lurches over as you bend.

We are on the brink, the break of dark.
The lanterns lull.

We are leaving…
on cracked and caving paving.

© Daniel James Greenwood 2011

Like Starlings

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I am like a starling,
I mimic people passing,
and craning from the roof,
I whistle a little tune.

We are just like starlings,
with iridescent markings,
we gather on the roof,
we play our little flutes.

I am but a starling,
I call to people passing,
and perched up on the weathervane,
I play my little flute.

We are all like starlings,
we sing to people passing,
our bodies made for dancing,
we sing our little tunes.

© Daniel James Greenwood 2011

If I am not in love

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If I am not in love
I can be found,
tearing pages from children’s colouring books,
letting them into the dock.

If I am not in love
I can be found,
mugging schoolboys
for their headphones.

If I am not in love
I can be found,
sinking rowboats
in Regent’s Park.

If I am not in love
I can be heard,
speeding past your house
blaring funky house.

If I am not in love
I can be found,
burning plastic figurines
in midday alleyways.

If I am not in love
I have been known
to throw stones, at the windows
of the Sefton Palm House.

If I am not in love
I can be found,
pouring thick black oil
into my sleeping neighbour’s pond.

If I am not in love
I can be found,
belching in the cosmetics aisle
of a monolithic supermarket.

If I am not in love
I can be seen,
picking my nose and sat at this desk
by my bedroom window.

© Daniel James Greenwood, 2010

For Anna

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From her sickbed she
heard the cranes cry
and flee, from the
dry autumn field.

She listened
to the golden oriole,
singing in the spring,
she knew of where they flew.

It was her willow
and nameless trees,
felled along
the avenues of her childhood,

they opened
and taught me how to be,
to sense the life of the land,
and its song.

© Daniel James Greenwood, 2011