I had a leaf in my hair when I arrived

the receptionist thought it was a hairclip
I didn’t know how to tell her I’d been doing my pre-op
under a beech tree, leaves drifting down like snow
fungus like a great carved shelf
bracketing the question when do we begin to die?
three ages of a tree: sapling, adult in crown
then the dying creature leaning on its own crooked arms,
fingers splayed, velvet skin slumping, gathering tenderly
over lumpen nodes where limbs once were

if our days are numbered may they be beautiful numbers,
numbers in their prime scampering soundless along
branches of all possible numbers, numbers of cells
multiplying, numbers of leaves, numbers of wrinkles
in our shared grey skin, myriad threads spooling out through
nodule and root, fibbonnaci ribbons, the final conclusion
that all is energy exchange, sugar and light, water and sap,
a slow movement from one state to the other,
that even in death, all is life.

Alice Huntley is an estuary girl, born by the Humber and living by the Thames. She has an MA in Chinese Studies and writes & reads with local poetry groups in Barnes & Chiswick, London. Her work deals with memory and the body and has appeared in Mslexia, Ink Sweat & Tears, Pennine Platform, London Grip, The Waxed Lemon and Poetry Worth Hearing.