I Go Inside The Tree

By Jo Shapcott

Profile at The Poetry Foundation

 

Indoors for this ash

is through the bark;

notice its colour –

asphalt or slate in the rain –

 

 

then go inside, tasting

weather in the tree of rings,

scoffing years of drought and storm,

moving as fast as a woodworm

 

 

who finds a kick of speed

for burrowing into the core,

for mouthing pith and sap

until the O my god at the heart.