More Resilient
At six a.m it starts, a lethal neck extends
towards the foundations that have held
this busy school up for thirty years, tearing
down the walls and floors, lino tiles a graveyard
for fallen leaves. I've watched the cluster and run
at half three every afternoon, the high joy
that took over this street, even the air coloured
with sound. Now this slow demolition, tumble
of cement; rafters torn like war-time limbs.
The sycamore, its name a necklace of vowels,
is a dark lace fretwork against an icy sky. It knows,
as all trees know, the cost of cutting down.
Hockney’s trees stand leafless, waving in winter
winds. No reminder here of his blazing LA sunsets,
instead the endless rain pelting the moors,
this soft town, and oaks whose skeletons
shudder, their branches hanging giddy in the cold.
Now his turquoise pool lives on in hedgerows,
the sea is a wink of the sky, each layer
of colour more resilient than the last.
When the day’s hourglass is fogged
there is quietude here – no clinging damp
in the mute patience of a gallery. The air
is still, almost nothing is happening.
We do not feel our nails grow or how
our skin cells give way to other cells.
This copse grows slowly, watches
from the confines of its rootedness, knowing
rubble is a mulch of sorts, that cossets
new buds until it’s time to grow.
©Naomi Woddis 2010