Samaras

Having earned their wings through evolution
it is almost as though they are loth to use them
preferring familiar earth, the old tree’s broad shadow.

Everywhere you look these whips of sycamore, living
where they fell, rooting out some well of nourishment
in a wall, a bed, a yoghurt pot of rotting leaves.

And so many of them! Impossible to count their bristling ranks
like massed souls grumbling on the banks of Lethe
jostling to be noticed as the fates allot each life.

Was there a single moment — when the air darkened,
and down they span like fallen angels, a forest
carried within their collective spinning wings?

I do my bit, kneeling to uproot individual stems
while the tits turn cartwheels in the old tree’s limbs.
I know this is no more or less than they expect.

Underground, a widening web of roots
is slowly moulding faith from darkness
settling itself for the rise and fall of years.

David Lukens lives in Wiltshire. His work has been published in magazines such as Acumen, Butcher’s Dog and Under the Radar. His pamphlet  One Brief Wave won the Cheltenham Poetry Festival’s first pamphlet competition and was published in 2021