In the small wood behind our house
Al Crow

It was a type of hysteria that rotted the ash,
the black buds failing in a metamorphosis
that should have been habitual.
Next an unseasonal wind came for the poplar,
which no longer stood taller and stronger.
The sycamores were brutalised too
by an old lady’s son-in-lawlessness,
who snuck in under the cover of a storm
and hacked her a better view of this suffering world.
The buddleia were well gone by then,
already cleared away in the clearing clear up,
and we were left,
walking our children to school,
through this microcosm of destruction,
trying to imagine more care elsewhere.