The bare bones of trees

The stone cadence of your words are footsteps 

that seem to approach with a heaviness

then fade away again from my earshot,

but we have conversations in the silent spaces

in between, where we misinterpret 

the occasional gesture of a hand or

squinted glance.

I have signs to ward you off chalked to my skin

and amulets to rattle at you now

though you seem to ignore them, and 

beyond you my eyes search for the bare bones

of trees that expand across the skyline,

splayed rib cages of them that span

their arterial embrace, that oversee

the grey bruise of the river

as it cuts new banks for itself below.

I feel their blurred dark branches reach

their shadow-fingers into the fringes 

of my consciousness until this becomes 

the discordant symphony, faint,

on the outskirts of each day,

and amongst these songs of suffering,

I know, at least, that I exist, and because

at other times, in the fractures of storms,

I need to remember them. I hold onto

them in my head, palms to cheeks, gentle

with the fragility of its atom bomb curves

as I play dead for winter like the Beech

and Sycamores beside your Yew tree

awake with its shine of blood berries.

 
Image from pixabay