The Hung Parliament.  May2010

May’s long days light the leaves,

Unfurling from the woodland trees,

At roadside, garden, park and wood,

The lime, horse-chestnut, last the ash.

 

The buds relax and sepals fall,

 Discarded cradles drift on paths.

 The midges rise to meet the sap,

 High lies the nests, the drey, the starch.

 

Below slim saplings bend and kink

To reach the sun and find a space.

 Sharing, and in competition, found,

 Beneath our feet, above our crowns.

 

And if the axeman fells the trees

The saplings break beneath the trunks,

Or wither in the frosts and gales,

Without the older’s canopy.

 

Yet if the saplings then were cleared

To favour the established trees,

 The futures gone, all wasted seed,

 The diverse shoots are shot and dead.

 

Better the axe-man then was hung

and the hatchet buried deep in ground.