31

The outshelter we are long shorn
above: it is important to raise
countless subtrees at every
gauge of growth, wedding
no universe of replacement.

This loss of risen wealth
beaches on the severed height:
underneath and without bareness
of reproach, spared more than
lowest (ungapped) re-approach.

A cistern of buried roots
gives spill-size a light
to the consolation of un-
leaked (parodied) shoot.

Repair is flabbier than re-invasion
but the compassion is clothable
ground, warded by this generation
to within a stem of the stamp-out.

Sproutage as a surge-ignorance
by open stasis in the clearing
cut green unclean to foot:
staying go-shaven
without the furtherance of closure.

Secondary piety
in a poverty of concision
healing what is sagged to site:
one low dowering
cores revision
on the rod.

32

Spears out (out of) dorsal
spate, thin burnish
crabs it steeply,
might graft but not crest
regeneration, or what a
community in dumpy stick
won’t traverse as hoard,
though abroad enough
beyond seedling fir.

Not hinged on survival horizon
save at liddable shoot.

Unengrossed cap of beech
exports from canopy to sprout.
These scraps between the fender’s polar weave
re-attach a glow in the throat,
a morsal of swallowed flame
from callus to tip.

Damage to forest
at the tipped brokerage.
A fineal mosaic of change
assured preliminary
stanchion no lower than
any upright’s unsowing.

33

Spars lofted to a bar
at naked instances.
Revival by other green screens
than ground off ground.

Faint second-growth shadow
of the original interminable
negotiation a middle aisle
closer, a conjugate ex-aggregate.

Forests not resown to cover
but blunt parody of anoriginal
aslants of cut,
slighted to asymmetric
radicals to resume
the reel of cycles forth,
the tallness straits
over subvacuous crowns.

Copyright © Peter Larkin, 2002.