Thursday 19 February 2009

Late winter woods walk



Wood Not yet Out

closed and containing everything, the land
leaning all around to block it from the wind,
a squirrel sprinting in startles and sees
sections of distance tilted through the trees
and where you jump the fence a flap of sacking
does for a stile, you walk through webs, the cracking
bushtwigs break their secrecies, the sun
vanishes up, instantly come and gone.
once in, you hardly notice as you move,
the wood keeps lifting up its hope, I love
to stand among the trees listening down
to the releasing branches where I've been -
the rain, thinking I've gone, crackles the air
and calls by name the leaves that aren't yet there

A Wood Coming into Leaf

A greenwood through a blackwood
passes (like the moon's halves
meet and go behind themselves)

And you and I, quarter- alight, our boots in shadow

Birch, oak, rowan, ash,
chinese-whispering the change.

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