When we came to allocate the fields Only those trees that fitted into our small horizons stayed The survivors became natures arbiters Straddling the newly pastoral and a mythic world now gone Traces left in gnarled bark and the whisper of leaves Their lives prolonged by pollarding hand after hand after
hand Somewhere down the line hands were washed Our connection further strained Hedgerows no longer tended did not stay tame Giving themselves in decay to the earth
Making fertile the soil, ground primed
the veterans remain
As wildness begins to reign we concrete over
Then desire a lawn So buy fertiliser Ship nourishment in from Russia, the US or Israel Ever shaping the land Restlessness the only story