White Waltham

 

The tree must have been accused by lightning.
There was a cordite memory, or namely the draft
Of carbon alchemy.

In any case the tree fell. Then I fell out of it.
I was summoned by the same gravity that flew
Past Newton and made the moon sane.

In any case, we were both summoned down
And hurled at reality. In both, electrons
Were ripped off into ouch!

So there the tree sits like a slipped crown
Akimbo on some battlefield where clay
Was clotted in the names of rivalry.
In this way, carbon became inane
And reversed into pewter and Augustus John.

Then birds shot down their necessities
From the arrow sky.

I unravelled among branches limbed
By the treachery of chance.

What is stochastic and what the man?
These are questions for the falling
Mind to answer and for thunder to make numb.

Soon, plumbago trees and the first heralds
Of the death of colour. Then autumn
With its leather months, and the
Moon’s skeleton beyond.

I any case I have replanted my nerve ends
In the wood near the stile.
There, they may find new root and chance
In natural abundances.

In any case lightning will reach up with its roots
And grasp all that it means to grow
And be summoned down.
All this it will never know as surely
As I will become another kind of pronoun.

Such is pronunciation, and the wind
Suddenly at pains for new voices.

 

(C) N J Green