The Tree
Those grey logs eaten out by fire hold
the very lines of life, engraved like flint
yet soft as moth-wing, delicate as mold,
the shape of life, not life; a ghost print.
In the narrow landscape where those ashes lie,
the silver moon is lead, the stars are mute,
no ocean whispers to the dull sky,
no wind stirs above the shadow root;
yet there, between life and death, in the grey air,
between last silence and the last despair,
on the held verge of chaos, there, there
the delete lines emerge, the hid spell,
the fire-struck runes, released at last to tell
of a shining tree, a tree that never fell.
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