White Horse Tree

White flags steal the sundance
Of the shaking wind, as
They make their way

Across a street, along the telegraphís
Messages, deep
Into the perimeters of fountains.

These are the markings of death,
the saffron robes of holiness
Shredded now

Tattered to a single colour,
The immensity of a life's attachment
Made manifest

In these funeral fringes.

Girded in a brick-rust length of chain,
A dappled elephant
Unaware of these changes

Pushes timber onto a lorry,
Teaching humility to all
Who catch his earth turned eye.

In the tree of the crows, wrapped
In its sounds of passing ducks
The white faced horse

Chalks himself into the world.
In a cloak of seaweed
He breathes enchantment
Into this tree's canopy,

In an ashen profile he knows
The name of every village sailor
Taken at Jafna,

Circling now at this black tree.

He knows the wasteland
that awaits me
He knows

For every flicker of destiny
Glows dark in his now fixed gaze
Holding me

Making me forever
A captive
Of white horse tree.

©1997 Sean Woodward