What light there is not quite enough
Trees spread their boughs
Further, wider, darker
Leafless forms leave the eye prey
To sleight of those bony hands
And to imagined shifting serpentine roots
From where subterranean shapes emerge
While night’s curtain to silence falls
Leaving the owl to hunt at will
The little creatures that dare scurry
Across loose-laid woodland litter
And here the only noise
The kitchen clock
.
CLP 18/11/2019