Mellowed tumbling slopes,
an oak in sunlight, shift and swell;
laughing with the wind
the shouting leaves,
tawny, gold and fading green,
snatch and jostle, clamouring to embrace the air,
to whirl into the wild, high, thin parabolas
of dream and dance
and sudden-seeming death.
Behind their myriad fevers,
cool and still
stands
the tree of their creation,
sudden glimpses of its dark-branched journeys
from its central genesis,
its own ‘I am’.
The leaves fall easy on a healing wind;
for they shall all be changed, be drawn
to live within another glory.
Beyond the bars, the oak in sunlight;
behind the bars, a man.
Soon they will lead him out to die -
an oak leaf in his sudden-certain hand....
(November, 1985)
