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Priest’s Way Tree

Helen Pizzey

She is Atlas, map-etched
bark of her saturnine trunk
straining upwards, dividing
bony-fingered to cradle

knuckles of planets and
gemstone rings of stars.

Stripped cleaner than a soul,
she’s all angles and curves:
sin-purged hollows and

spirit-filled mounds.

Day’s shadow collects
in bowls of her arms;
light darts from taut boughs
or filters through knots
of her storm-tousled hair.

Birds roost in her heaving ribcage,

syphoning air and spilling out song

as twilight re-clothes her
(skeletal, transparent)
in skin the colour of fruit’s
weathered bruise and blemish.

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