Open Gate At Dead Tree Field

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.

Comments

The Cranky said…

I think I'm suffering snowdrop envy; no chance of those here for quite a while. Still, I love how the trees tangle up the sky this time of year.

23 January 2014 at 20:29

Lisa Southard said…

We have little white flowers in the garden hedge too now- such a lovely feeling they give- a preliminary to all the other colours about to burst out :-)

24 January 2014 at 22:46

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