Crouching low at the foot of a hollow clearing,
cored from the density of trees in our holding of
forest, I know something lacks. Not the cool, insistent
billow of breeze from the West, or the mousey
rustle of dead leaves pooling around us. A shaft
of late summer sun that lazily probes about the high
branches, picks out an oval of scrub. A trace memory,
a silhouette that says 'it was here'. I'm there now, kneeling
with arms scooping at stubbed twig, dug roots and sawn
bark. Cut keenly in stages, there, where a tree was, now a
stump; the years fall to the centre. But the roots still swim
outwards, breaking the surface then submerging. Now I have
my mantissa, my makeweight. Poetry will replace that tree with
honed words, staked and trained with care. Verse will shape the
canopy; the sky will read your features for meaning.
