18. Hedgerow Tree

We cannot falsify
the record of brutality
and good years stored.

Rings of grain
fat with light and rain
or drought-packed, close and lean.

Lead shot, bedded,
wide of pheasants’ wings
or scutt-tail, by the field’s edge.

Good harvests and the hail
of hard rain over stubble.
Blood-burst; hare’s eye, fractured limb

beneath a sporting winter sky.
Doom defeats the light of day
then winter night, moon-lit canopy

dog-yelp, death-wave
lurching through homeland
shattered branch, heart-rot

and stapled wire
hammered into living bark
entombed

that later, on the table-saw
snaps back at rip-teeth,
to degrade the spoil.