1.
Easter Maple.
This tree, the council workers left for dead
last autumn, when the pavements and the roads
of my local suburb were littered with the
sad farewells
inevitable at the close of such a summer.
But now this tree, earmarked for the electric saw
heard annually in these streets in early spring,
especially after a violent storm has lifted
tiles and chimney pots, and smashed them down
like toys
chucked out of doors by intolerant children.
This tree,
this small dead tree,
this recollection of our first home,
Eden,
(after the Fall when all the plants had died
and winter had become the only season),
is now embossed with miniature ripening buds
sticky to the touch and succulent with newness.
It is perhaps almost certain that this maple
has won outright its claim to flourish here
in the tiny square of earth, allocated by the
council,
outside my front room window.
And perhaps one future summer, sweltering like
last year,
its full grown boughs will shelter the heads of
strangers
walking where I walked, a decade or two earlier,
concocting notes that morphed into this poem.
This tree, the council workers left for dead,
untended
may yet survive these elegant red brick houses
and grow up tall and straight and dark with power,
a restless power far older than mankind. -
I fold up my notebook and press it into my pocket.
The paving stones ring hollow under foot.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 15th. - 16th. - 22nd. 2017.
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2.
The Ides of March.
Surprised by a wan red moon
the whole neighbourhood out of doors
Waiting for something to happen.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 15th. - 16th. 2017.
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