Chêne de la Pleyde

Final day of Paul Brookes’ ekphrastic prompt. Here’s a final contribution (unless there’s one tomorrow). You can see the images here, and read the poems.

Chêne de la Pleyde

They ask you what you see in the lone tree,
witch, Gorgon, Ent perhaps?
And in the clouds (usually dragons),
in bird formations. You count the magpies
and how many petals are left on the daisy.

There’s an old oak here, has a name,
and it grows in a meadow where horses graze and run.
It grows and spreads and hugs its history
into rings inside its chest.

It looks like the past, present and future,
the horse-tree, holding this hillside together
beneath a chaotic sky, showered
with black darts of birds and the red orb,
descending, taking us with it, it says.