Spinney

This is a reworking of a poem that appeared earlier on Sound of Many Waters. I've long felt that its last stanza, in which my journey comes to rest under the roots of the oak, belonged in it but was not the place to end it, because I want to share a better hope in these poems. 

Spinney

When I was a child there was a chestnut.

Her candles blazed all May long, giving way

To tawny rubies casked in spiky green,

Her low-arced branches luring me to climb

and conquer.

 

Later it was a beech tree I loved best.

My auntie had one growing by her gate.

Though she had many shapely arms, she called it

Venus de Milo for her voluptuous torso

And sheeny skin.

 

Next came a birch, slender silver

Barred with elegant black, bronze too

at her wrists, yet tough as tundra,

And in season a shimmer of shivering,

defiant gold.

 

There were many more saplings for my spinney,

Hornbeams and hollies, lissom willows,

Doomed tragedies of elm and ash,

Even a few prickly conifers, and then

There was rowan…

 

But now I’ve acquired my warts and wrinkles,

Scars and crags, and I’m drawn to you, the oak.

Deepest rooting, widest spreading, you’ve seen off

The scourings of many a stormy winter

and got the marks.

 

Yet still there stands a thorn, a little apart,

In jagged outline on a darkened hill

With spines like daggers in the hands and heart

And a crown of scarlet berries shining, till

I yield my will.