Birches in Winter

White      bark and lint-flecked trunks,
branches bare as cello strings to be plucked by the wind.
I sigh into this solitude
vacate the hollowed spaces within
Let them lie fallow      untilled.
The bird      black in the boughs
shivers at the paucity      the brevity of leaves
and I in my wandering      sit on the bank
and throw stones for the thrush to mistake for snails
Hammering      yielding the soft flesh of yesteryear
But today no more
The snails are shells      empty in the blight
like my thoughts,      the sky and the trees.

From ‘Island of Feathers’
A collection of lyric writings by Marie-Claire Colyer