Old lank nexus of brooms, old
purple-black loft of leafage,
old rib-cage with thickened gams
and stiff-stretched arms,
old frightener at the garden’s end,
you become a wicker man
in my imaginings. And although
you contain no sacrifice,
no penned cattle, pigs or goats,
no trussed-up hens or geese,
no captive human being in panic
or forlorn beseechment –
with only insects and songbirds
flitting among your twigs,
nurtured, maybe even charmed –
still there is the haughty
towering buoyancy you possess,
the grim, glowering look
you throw that hooks me deepest
at sunset or by moonlight,
when the smudge-mark
of sadness feeds off your outline,
and I see nature funning
with itself and with us, in one place
a firestorm ravishing
the forest, in another a torrent
breaking its sides laughing,
the world no less a grief than a joy,
and, in your wicker dance,
the light tangling with the dark.
Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children’s writer from Loughrea. Keepsake, his tenth collection of poems, appeared from Dedalus Press in 2024. www.patrickdeeley.net