Wood, a Poem by Patrick Williamson

Wood

by Patrick Williamson

Whirl, leaves, see
the old trunk, the other

side, eyeholes
barely wide, light

licking up the rough,
a springboard shot out

to hallow weld, the
fallen wood cruxes

dug into dark green
nothing but bark,

rivulet-dried
hard to the sap -

the other
side, ditch,

scurrying woodlice
soulless scrub
some-one else's pile.

Patrick Williamson is an English poet and translator, who was born in Madrid in 1960 and currently living near Paris. He has translated selected poems of Tunisian poet Tahar Bekri (Unknown Seasons) and Quebecois poet Gilles Cyr (The Graph of Roads). In 1995 and 2003, he was invited to the Festival International de Poésie at Trois-Rivières in Québec. He is the editor of Quarante et un poètes de Grande-Bretagne (Ecrits des Forges/Le Temps de Cerises, 2003) and editor and translator of The Parley Tree, Poets from French-speaking Africa and the Arab World (Arc Publications, 2012). His poems have been translated into French, Italian, Bulgarian, Georgian and Russian. Latest poetry collections: Locked in, or out?, Red Ceilings Press, and Bacon, Bits, & Buriton, Corrupt Press, both in 2011.

Copyright 2012, Patrick Williamson. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.