By Scarlet Torch and Blade

Chapter 11: NATURE’S TOTEMS

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About This Book

A varied poetry collection presents lyrical meditations on open landscapes, woodland life, and the forces of fire and weather. It is organized into thematic sections that range from expansive outdoor scenes to domestic moments, playful verse, a sequence devoted to individual tree species, and a group of poems reflecting travel and longing abroad. Imagery often centers on natural details—trees, animals, rivers, and mountain tops—while occasional narratives depict human labor, community, and small, ironic observations. Tone shifts between solemn, celebratory, and whimsical, and several poems combine illustration with short rhymes to evoke mood and place.

NATURE’S TOTEMS

With tools rough-wrought the untaught scribe Carved deep the glory of his tribe— Amazing monsters—grotesque, stiff, With curious, quaint hieroglyph. Brave in barbaric dyes, his scroll— So left the scribe his totem-pole.

Though rotted, broken, scattered far These totems of the savage are, Proud totems—vastly mightier, The lineaments of Nature bear.

The mountain’s twisted ribs of rock Laid bare, proclaim the earthquake shock, And how it was through turmoil great Exalted to its high estate; An upturned fossil on the plain Reverts to Dinosaurian reign, Another shows his prowess gone— The advent of the Mastodon; The lopside fir is eloquent Of battling winters nobly spent; The shell upon the mountain side Betrays an ancient ocean’s tide; These are the totems, cryptic, terse, We find in Nature’s universe.