The Orchard
Down past rough slivers of Cotswold stone wall
was the lower garden reaching from earth
gnarled tendrils erupted like arthritic hands pear
and cooking apple trees with sweet bitter fruit
The pommes were balls of mush bigger than my grip
that would I was told rot my innards at a bite but the
pears were rumped beauties on thin knuckle branches
and I sunk into them turning over with each swallow
I tossed each carcass with its bullet pips into log
pile looking up to the titan cherry tree black limbs
beyond best jump carrion cackled and bombed
leafless in dark symbiosis the birds a crow canopy
Evergreens rustled around thick with brown and dusty
webs owls and bats roosting side by side stirring with
flexing flap and stretch of feather at syrup blood
sprayed through air and the clatter of seed skulls
The crows were scalping those cherry nuts cutting
blistered flesh with beak I’d keep palms open
strafing to catch a miss pulled stem a spinning rivulet
of berries but now I would climb that tree dig blunt
nails into bark bend and rip at the thought of hunger
roar a shadow to sky not wait for what falls to me
Z D Dicks is the Founder/CEO of the Gloucestershire Poetry Society and Gloucester Poetry Festival. He holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing. His first collection, Malcontent, is available from bookstores and online.