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THE
WINDOWS
I
size up windows from a garden’s end:
all
black at first in geometric lots
inset
in white walls phloxed and cyclamened
with
scent. Black glass like
nothing-slots.
Then
I see how the oak I’m under knots,
refigured,
in the sunglass window panes.
The
house itself is full of forest veins.
Jungles
of boughs hang where we live and dine.
Spanish
moss, ivy, deck the kitchen. I
guess
that up through the staircase-well incline
big
oak trunks like constrictors. Up
they pry,
floundering
to fill bedroom and loft. The
high
buds
fritter. Later dead husks
will brown,
form
carpet, insulation, eiderdown.
I
feel a chill, excited and bright-eyed,
as
from the sun and smell-drenched garden chair
I
see interiors, the other side
of
windows, photo negatives, aware
I’m
simple-minded. Once, a
child somewhere,
I
thought a wood in an art gallery
led
to another hollow I might see.
I’m
for a real house down that painted lane,
full
of just pools and trees. There
any fear dies
which
makes me draw my horns in from the rain
since
rains there are so gentle. My
other highs
would
be to ravish Nature where she lies,
then
to cognise her algebraic laws.
But
best would be to live with trees indoors.
Alan
Marshfield
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