Saturday, October 23
[I CAN ONLY BE WHO I AM] I can only be who I am Said the storm as it drew its crow wings about the tree The tree knew that smell It flinched and held itself small and rigid If it had gods it would ask them for mercy Splintering its thousand green flags In the storm's great embrace But the tree knows loneliness too Learnt from the caterpillar and the bird And godlessness, which is next to survival And a hundred other small skills Which are barely noticeable from the sky But have counted for something grand In the hill's meadow-grass. Remember we walked its grey trunk Over the fluent stream It gave us passage, but no word of what lay beyond (Sasha Dugdale)