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i.
A lime tree felled, its three-foot stump
For days continued drawing sap
From blind-eyed roots which like a pump
Spread liquor on the stump’s blond lap.
Fermenting
in the sun’s May heat
It
bulked with sawdust like a gruel,For sipping ants and spiders, meat,
Though flashing like a prism’d jewel.
Such
doggedness and will to live!
May
I, now dropping hair and teeth,When lopped by time no less contrive
To dazzle with my final breath!
May 2014
ii. A Tree Stump (Afterthought)
Now
weeks have passed that stump has set
Into
a shelf of leather brownHardened by summer’s grin or frown
And the day’s whim, now parched, now wet.
The
grain is glossy, crosscut by
A
pattern from the chainsaw’s blades;All’s polished into hard-gleam shades
As by the weather’s husbandry.
Tanned
and toughened like a dried corse,
Aglint
in noonday’s heavy sun,Senseless it sleeps as the weeks run
Dumb to memory or remorse.
June 2014
iii. A
Tree Stump (Again)
Two
months later, passing that way
In
the chill morn of a damp day,Bemused I saw the stump had sprung
A whorl of leaves, all freshly slung:
Dew-dropped
and dimpled as a hand,
Through
the grey-walled bark, rough like sand,Sea-water green they squeezed to life,
Toothsome as vegetables for the knife.
Truly,
from the first Big Bang leap
A
force in nature does not sleep;So these frail leaves in the bark’s grist
Struggle to life and will not desist.
August 2014
iv. A Tree Stump (Final)
But
in one month the tale was done,
The
stump was grubbed; a shallow holeOf dowdy chippings, shrunk in sun,
Is all that’s left, where cats now roll.
September 2014
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©
May-September 2014