Onward, Leaf!
https://damusic.be/cd/rhob-cunningham-onward-leaf-8157.html
Certain holly leaves on certain holly bushes can tell if a deer is nibbling the lower leaves, so much so that the next growth of leaves become spikier nearer its base than at its peak. A holly leaf isn’t by its nature prickly, instead, it becomes pricklier when it needs to defend itself from nibbling deers. (Source)
I moved near a place where there was a chestnut tree. Not the kind of chestnut tree that you find all over Ireland, the horse chestnut, with its conkers waiting to be tied to a string and defeated.
No, where I moved to, there was a chestnut tree that deposited the type of chestnuts you can eat, the ones that on the streets of Paris I once bought with a friend, as much to keep our hands warm as to feed upon.
That day, with my friend in Paris, we ate mushrooms and visited a museum and it was a joy walking around admiring the framed creations, until one, one depicted a warring scene so well
that I could see the blood on the spattered-painted-pavement drying before my eyes.
It stayed with me. It is an example of a successful art. That artist arted the hell outta that painting.
Lots of ways to succeed but one is to convey horror to a tripping thirty-something with warm hands and a paper bag of chestnut shells.
1.
What I Wouldn't Pay = literal
What I wouldn't Give = figurative
2. In relation to a dying wish :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murlough_Bay
3.
Inspired by an afternoon of watching Fionnathan Presents: What Do You Love?
4. Whorled
5. Conflationary veins from a leaf-shaped tree.
6. Protection
7. Security for the ones you love.
8. Energy to spare
9. Vision
10. The Horizon
12. The branches soft and green (traditional)
I moved near a place where there was a chestnut tree.
I collected the chestnuts.
The tree knew;
dropped none the next year in the hope the boar below would go away.