Staring Out Of Windows At Trees

Staring Out Of Windows At Trees
(Cycle Of Seven Sonnets)
By
Anjali Paul

In loving memory of my father.

1. Rebirth

The dying sun's last blood ebbs into night,
pulsing through tree veined skies to my heart's beat.
I am this living world, it's my birthright;
I can feel the Earth breathe beneath my feet.

When I lost it all, and my dignity
deserted me; when my old life was dead,
eradicated by insanity;
this was my second womb. Here I was fed

on visions by the universal mind;
nourished with knowledge that could only be
gained when I had cut the last tie to bind
me to my conditioned reality.

I thought I'd died, but I had been reborn
like the night that dies into a new dawn.

*****
c. Copyright By Anjali Paul

2. No Time Is Wasted Time

When I came to live here I had no clue
how to escape out of my mental maze.
My parents did what loving parents do;
sheltered me while I struggled through that phase.

I thought I was wasting time by staring
at trees from the windows of their new flat
(with a skill honed at school). They kept caring
as I relived those childhood patterns that

had built the room where I had always lived
inside my head. And then I saw how to
unlock that old door. My freedom was sieved
through the beauty of a different view.

No time is wasted time, I know these days
we learn to heal ourselves in many ways.

*****
c. Copyright by Anjali Paul.

3. Elemental Souls

These black-edged window panes have sometimes framed
the other universe; they map and grid
the world in which my dreams are formed and named,
the one that shapes and is shaped by my id.

I've seen a young queen etched against the sky,
she took wind-hewn majesty as her due.
I've seen a long thin sprite, eager and shy
a red-nosed rabbit and a chicken too.

I've seen so many beings breezing through
the storied trees with each fresh gust of air;
were they, like me, once transformed by this view
into another state, a new life where

their restless souls sought shelter in the trees
and came that way to be rooted in peace?

*****
c. Copyright by Anjali Paul

4. Out Of My Mind

This room is mirrored in the window pane
while at the same time I can see out there,
where my child self is glorying in rain
with elemental eyes and leaf strewn hair.

She won't come out of that imagined realm;
I know from her perspective it's far too
limiting to stay inside, at the helm.
I say it depends on your point of view;

this lamp glows in the glass bright as the moon
that is now full outside. Here we can fuse
our hearts and minds to form a mental tune
to which we can set any life we choose.

We're free to conceive new worlds there it seems,
and here we're free to give birth to those dreams.

*****
c. Copyright by Anjali Paul.

5. Absorbed In Nature

As I sit here my old man of the tree
absorbs me. His face is drawn in strong brown
arcs of weathered branches; and I can see
that he wants to smile, though his mouth curves down.

My father sat where I am sitting now
to lose his sadness in this beauty, viewed
through this window. These trees he loved knew how
to warm the wintry seasons of his mood.

Did the trees draw in what they had drawn out?
Did his emotions change their soulscapes too,
enrich their mental earth so they could sprout
new future lives grown from an altered view?

Though he moved on, was his melancholy
mood absorbed into the soul of a tree?

*****
c. Copyright by Anjali Paul.

6. Living Lessons In Art

Each new hour washes it's own colour through
the tree filled sky outside my window. Flame
red to gold my heart heals. Pain blurs into
awe; dissolves into budding leaves which frame

evanescent moons blossoming in Spring;
into birds dreaming their nests, canopied
by lucent shades of green jade as they sing
the scents of Summer. Grief resolves it's need

in Autumn clear and vibrant as one pure
note struck at sunset, rich and strong and proud;
dies snared by living wood carved to a lure
of Winter lace cobwebbed on pearl grey cloud.

Trees making art from life, beauty from pain
teach me what I have lived through loss to gain.

*****
c. Copyright by Anjali Paul

7. Spiritual Beauty

The sky glows crimson, pink and gold like stained
glass through perfect filigrees of trees, but
some were restrained in order to be trained
into beauty, others were pruned and cut.

Gold must be mixed with dross before it holds
the ideal form which one who crafts it sees,
minds must be poured hot into their new moulds
before they can cool into shapes that please.

Those who have never been ugly or wrong
become parodies of themselves with age,
for early beauty does not live too long
unless a blight perfects it at some stage.

Pain is the dross which when mixed with the heart
tempers it to a living work of art.

*****
c. Copyright by Anjali Paul.