From Norwood Oaks
The oaks that occupy
the window
seem like wind-caught smoke to flow into the air
though it was more than a lifetime of winters ago
that the wet clay made the embers of their acorns start to flare.
Rivers running backwards,
from broad mouths
in the ocean of ground, in a fissured flood
each thickly rises, eroding fine and finer grooves
in the blue-grey range of sky, to the trembling spring of each bud.
If only years of
summer daring
could have left their account twisted to such grace,
and limbs grew steadily more sinuous for baring,
and all that was shed left only marks of wisdom on the face,
and if our youth
came round again, unwearing
and new, we too might gladly for a thousand years call the earth our place.
John Gibbens
