tortuosa indeed, Pat. Now a young Robinia struggles in its place.
Bill
On 12/12/2012, at 8:28 AM, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Salix tortuosa-that tree suffered -hacked by young Bill
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Bill Wootton
> Sent: 11 December 2012 20:55
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Willow Tree snap
>
> 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.
>
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