after David Hockney

 

Through tangled centuries of ownership

and rights these trees have always survived.

Each one in its turn reduced to a stump,

they came back stronger, earning their keep.

 

The harsher the husbandry, the sturdier

they grew, for what do we know

that’s more dependable              

than roots, bole, and branches?

 

Retaining the vigour of endless youth,

they have outlived utility, their crowns

spread eerily against the sky

in this more than natural scene,

 

assembled here, panel by panel,

until it’s filled a wall, lit benignly

in this well-appointed room …

So how crazy was it,

 

with no more than a postcode

and a few vague directions, to drive

into the Wolds to find them, trying to match

some trees to the buildings beside them.

 

And when, maybe almost there, the sky

dissolved in torrents, I was sent back,

chastened, along a road

that seemed more like a swollen river.