Trees, Eventually

I can see them now,

these unwritten poems,

pressing against some invisible film,

which separates them,

in their unwritten state,

and us, in our here and now,

free of coronavirus poems.

There are so many of them,

waiting to get in; to burst through,

ready to overwhelm our patience,

with their tedious unoriginality,

saying what doesn’t need to be said.

The sub-par humour about loo rolls.

The sanctimonious rage against panic buyers.

The too-cool, detached, takedown

of this stumbling government.

Everything I detest about poetry

will be there, somewhere– infected.

And, despite what it looks like,

this isn’t one of those poems.

No, it’s a poem about trees,

with an ill-judged preamble,

because while I was writing,

what I was secretly thinking about was trees.

How I find their presence calming.

How I marvel at their beauty,

their complicated simplicity.

The sound they make as they wave at the clouds,

doing their little wind-dance.

Not how they reflect the seasons,

but how they are the seasons.

I place my hand upon the bark,

and I am the tree. And so are you.

I imagine carrying its wisdom with me,

back to my home,

where, over a cup of tea, we laugh at nothing.