Poem: Not one escaped

Not one escaped

In the forest a man is kicking trees
He tells me:
‘Not one escaped the toe of my boot’
I still see him now:
Man versus unmoved, unmoving tree

I see a green skin bruised and gashed,
A fracture less than clean, that weeps,
Resin draining as lymph drips,
On dry leaf litter,
A soiled lint, soaked and spent

Unfelt brambles, snatching thorns
Draw blood, a craze of spraying drops
Like dew, a consumptive’s hacking cough,
or first felt beads of summer rainstorm,
speckle the soft green pillowed moss

I hear a quiet moan as wood rubs wood
Where churning branches stroke the sky
Boots hit a pathside birch,
steel toecaps bite,
A heel breaks another fallen twig, in three

His thrashing blur, too full for thought
A fog of limbs and mind swept clean
Stumbles, exhausted in its fight
Against unwanted growth and time

For now …

Alone …

at the kitchen table
Untouched fruit, his wife unmoving waits
Her own clock’s quiet tick
unwinding
As it slows to its own
inevitable
Escape