Shy spears of snowdrop have
been unhidden by the hedge cutting. Halfway through its tenure, winter is
wished away. A blue sky is a portentous sky. A gate that always stands shut; to the field where the dead trees have held
long fascination; is open. An open gate is an auguring gate.
Here the hoof prints of the jostling bullocks are left, pressed in the soft
ground.
Here is the rubbed wood of their comfortable scratching: above the knotted roots
of the larger trunk, serpentine, vascular.
Outlines stark and precise,
colours patched, reptilian, like shedding skin, the two trunks stand, faintly
lean in: communicative, embracing.
Under tender earth the roots are settled, connecting without need.
These trees have outgrown leaf bearing.
Pared branches unshielded in all the changes of days.
Around them the hoof prints are trod and trod, the cud chewed up and forgotten.
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