On a blue sky day
Kites and gliders grounded, men
Envy the high birds

They burst upwards

All around this evening

There and there and there

Trees, Trees, Trees

Smashing through soil

To a darkening sky

Limbs and fingers and hands

Trunk and twig

Coiling coronaries

Pressed to the sky’s last

Etchings

Monoliths

Earths loud art

Not solemn

Not peace filled

This evening

Trees , Trees, Trees

Explode from the earth

Like Kraken from the ocean

Belittling

Reminding us

Trees Trees Trees

Four hundred million years

Before you breathed

Trees Trees Trees

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

The world spins tilted
On its axis, seasons turn
Another spring time

I have this thought…

Our lives like leaves in autumn
From high branches falling
A thousand shades are waving
Through spectral light
Then a scent, of earth
A cold nose and the sight
Of a warm glow

Four floors up
The old flat we brought our son to
The balcony where the parakeets visit
The tall beech and the rolling park beyond
The dense solitude of the estate all around
Pushing its edges into the earthy common
Its woods and mulched graveyards

And I am walking there
With no thoughts of future
Kicking through undergrowth

Through copse then open ground
The contrast deepening
The strangers thinning
I turn back for warmth

Four floors up, I find you sleeping
Four floors up, and I am falling

Taking my dog to the canal
Its tea coloured peace
Resting behind the town
He noses in nettles
Relieves himself on bluebells
As I eye the bridge's span

Towards its apex
Crushed beneath the roadway
A sapling reaches out
I look closer
Its lignified limb squashed flat
Emerging arthritic
Unfurling green fingers
In a  hopeful
Reaching last

I comprehend the wall
Council funded murals
Darter dragonfly, pipistrelle bat
King fisher
Washed over stone
Pale compensation
For nature entombed