VISITING THE GREAT TREE
The great tree stands on a knoll behind the farmhouse.
People walk in, for its rotted core was burnt out
two hundred years ago. A group of villagers
sat inside to dine, their story enriching the tree
which had already leafed in legend long before,
the rings of its years having wrapped it up in waves
while invading tribes advanced from fell to wold
with their gutturals and aspirates to weave a winter language.
Centuries of weather have tensed its sprung shape:
its branches quiver from within as well as from without
in a motion of pent up spirits. The great tree stays still
today, and from inside its body peers a wood-nymph,
nine years old, with glasses. Hereward the Wake
is homework to her, though the tree waved over him
perhaps, its arches of branches rounded with traceries,
keeping pace with the stone-masons. It shuffles
and hems and shifts like an old man muttering
of Odysseus recalling Delos, where a young palm tree
awed him with beauty; or how the Great King thankful
for a plane-tree’s shade decreed it a shrine for ever.
