Third Prize

HER TREE

He couldn’t know which trees was hers,

When he came to the overwhelming oaks

Standing as if acorned before the field

Was ever sheep-cropped, tilting like the tilt

of earth off which she’d fallen,

he couldn’t know which was her tree.

Surely he ought to know? Sure

As if she’d add a cubit to its height,

This chosen oak, her fertile ashes at it foot,

he ought to know the shape, the semiotic banter

of it particular telepathy with her mind?

He must not take a token road. Matter matters.

It was then he found, skinned in the undergrowth,

‘whosoever’. Seed-sprung it met him from childhood,

Nodding at a footfall, that he could choose.

‘Whichsoever,howsoever’. She was gone now.

As the cloud was. As would be the acorn’s oak.

In such a choosing he became the smoke

from the iron-clad stove, the gravel-heavy spade,

the ancient liverwort and cheeky umbellule,the earth itself,

the wind. Some current from her absence electrified him.

He became continuous, flung ash everywhere,

touched it on his tongue.

  Alison Leonard

  Cheshire.