Generally speaking, I'd have to agree with Max here, Bill. I was beginning to weary of, & not be sure of, the 'you' & then that shift into memory really caught me, so it seems to be the true heart of the poem...
Doug
On 2012-12-11, at 3:54 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> plenty of good visual promptings here and I like the way it shapes to a childhood remembered.
>
> but the address: your your your -
>
> to me feels very literary in an old-fashioned way unfortunately
>
> On 12/12/2012, at 7:54 AM, Bill Wootton wrote:
>
>> Twin-trunked willow flicking broken rocks with dangling tresses;
>> parting your rustling green curtains offers entry to a private glade.
>> Your yellow leaves clog the base of a once-fountain. Breezes shimmy your
>> moving walls. Sun spatters on the revealed bright floor. A stool.
>> Look up. Hugely knotted heads top your severely pollarded mainstays.
>> You defy easy climbing access from ground level. Crustily upright,
>> you'd cross your arms if you could. If you were a spider, you'd be
>> a Daddy Longlegs. Unspectacularity's your scene, genus Salix. Yet your
>> fat, drain-disturbing roots, way longer than your branches, extend
>> to all quarters of the front lawn. Tracking down water, some erupt
>> into periscopic elbows, the better to mess with motor mower blades.
>> Admitting and rejecting light, you don't so much weep as shelter;
>> and provide: elastic green whips for me, cricket clubs for older boys.
>> From height, your gathered vines offer Tarzan-style airy swinging freedom.
>> Unlike Ophelia who slipped to her burbling death from your broken arms,
>> I always felt safe, perched on your mottled bark, ladder angled below,
>> listening to your whispery sweeping. So benign, so readily accepting.
>> You barely whimper with each sharp serrated bushsaw action.
>> One cent per footlong fleshy limb, I'm promised; two cents for bark-encrusted
>> thicker bits. When Dad returns, I'll have cut enough for a pack of smokes.
>>
>> Bill Wootton
>> 12 December 12
>>
>>
>> P S Alexander Pope apparently planted some willow twig cuttings used to bind a parcel from Spain to Lady Suffolk which took and created English weepers, a fact I have been unable to insert in the above snap.
Douglas Barbour
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