Tony Cullen

Widowed Woods


behind the waymarker
dark deep pathless
pleasure extending muddy

potential playing strange
Big Easy phrases
through beautiful contortions

and swirls of new
light channelling
an old unofficial

course all trajectories
toil upward toward
the unknown resigned

to a life plan of perpetual
motion and the endless
effort to speak through

the fluency of deformed
upcropping scatter confident
brushstrokes dashed

in wreaths twisted
mosaics clasping
the steeper route of false

friendship above roily
race cleft following
its long gallery

crawl flanked by free
margins where dual
purpose Blacks lift

from browsing to aim
lashes at the witness
latched over the stile

"I'm not going over there."
advance to the rear
toward Wagtail dance

high
higher
highest

tugging on the air
through which this
year's clan unhooked

from the knuckle fall
and melt returning
to the root rods

holding
together
everything