No Echo of Trees

Straight, and faintly

stroking the landscape:

cranes,

all leg and neck,

staves of sheet music,

wading the lake’s studied calm.

Then, hedgerows crossed out

by insistent unused lanes.

My eyes skate

the shaded windscreen glass

until

another passing pine

lashes the sky

and
an opened gate

hyphenates a fence.

—-

Words
manifest behind closed eyes:

the gaps resonate,

sounds and ciphers

cast
to times roadside ditch.

Perception
and description switch.

I look again, past the driver:

the outer world reveals no gaps where things are not,

no echoes of trees on desolate moor,

and then close

to confirm what’s written ,composed;

view the spaces which fashion the language

and know everything is where it isn’t.