When branches sink their roasted
Leaves into next Spring’s earth
The Dead meet the Saints and Winter’s
Angels light the leafless dark.
trees
This could be Rotterdam or anywhere, Libya or Rome
What is it? It is a
Conversation piece
Dots on a tree in
Different colours –what
Do they mean? One two three
Four and more, so many
We cannot count them
Without difficulty, some
Times two or three double
Into one round hole deeper
Than the others but
No more cylindrical,
Difficult to make out the
Difference from a distance,
Need to go up close to
Identify the nature of each pock
And what it has done to the tree
Behind, an indelible spot has come from
A gun or guns that once hung
Loose and then was cocked quickly
Under arms and blasted
Hotly at thin air between
It and the street, shooting
Everything to Eternity unless
It is a tree that can
Clot holes more effectively
Than blood, poorly sheathed
In skin not bark that can accept
The heat of deafening pierces
Without shattering into thousands
Of flashing and shard-filled niches.
And the colours? They don’t look
Natural. Actually they represent
Each flag that fed this tree with
Shrapnel and thus paint
A portrait that is true and clear,
More than any pact or international
Treaty, a picture of collaboration
Between nations to cross fertilise
Wars whose ends are unsure but
Whose sustenance sustains the governments
Economically and physically, boundaries they’ve made,
The counter-pacts and terrorism they’ve
Deeply invested in to preserve
Something that openly calls itself
Freedom and, when it thinks no one
Will wikileak its oil, whispers
The real fight, supremacy, before all
Goes quiet again and the friends who
Share a quiet room
Sealed off from the noise, as yet
Unspotted, get off pock-free.
Park perspective
Without him the light
Is glorious.
Beach-ball-bats glisten.
With him it would
Be different.
A bench would be our
Stage and all the world,
Scenery.
Autumn Walks
1.
Trees split the light
Softly
Prizing away
Sinews
Like a surgeon,
Through to
The Sun’s
Fleshy core.
Leaves glow yellow
In the gloaming.
Sunny reds
Fleck the endless
Floor.
No chestnuts rust
The grass,
Not yet. But
Squirrels forage
For crumbs and
Tit-bits huddled
Under-leaf, left,
Last morsels
Of the Brightness
Lost to Day.
2.
The light recedes
Behind
The trees and lights
Fold out electric
Strips across
The Lake,
No thought for sleep.
The birds, in trees,
In lake, must
Hood their
Eyes,
Hide lids in down
Being Every Day 