The Ironbark

Peter Matthews

It has three trunks,
each blackened as if burned
in its growing and setting
its limbs to the sun,
and all else to come.

It rears above the palings,
reaching and splaying its branches
ending in feathered green
as fluid as water in the breeze,
set off against molten iron rivulets

running through its bark’s crevasses,
running around the surgeon’s cuts
as if to feed their healing
as they fade into
that marvellous blackness,

running down and into
the earth, meeting the roots
that draw the clay’s essence
from deep below like a
great river’s tributaries.

It is a constant
just beyond our window.
Its fingers reach along the eaves
as if to shelter us.
We watch its changing colours

marking the turns of the day —
orange in the early morning,
green clouds in the midday sun,
edged silver by mid-afternoon,
gold-tipped as the evening comes,

then a formless sentinel at night,
still and steady, waiting for the light.