The black ash glowers against the cruel mist,
bad-tempered tree clutching the last shabby,
tattered remnant November leaves, hating
the creeping cold, resentment bitter in its
stiff clenched upturned branches and twigs
angrily threatening the air, the rain, the snow.
Man and creature make the best of winter
in the hugged warmth of bedrooms, lairs, earths.
The tree hugs nothing but the brazen wind,
its bare branches slashed with snow, crippled by
frost and mortified by ice. But the tree
braves the dark days with a fierce faith
in insignificant black buds
at the end of every twig. It holds in its veins
a secret almost forgotten by huddled men and creatures,
that the clocks will turn, the year swing from the dark,
that those black buds will burst out into leaves.
Black Ash in Kleingemund
Sylvia Read