This poem has been a time in the making.  The original notes which form the basis of the thought were written a while ago and, as I was writing them, I felt that the poem would virtually write itself.  I have learned from hard experience that such feelings are almost always woefully wrong.
     This poem has gone through many drafts, and I am not sure that they have reached a conclusion - but I also think it's worthwhile posting what I have done so far so that I can read it with a certain degree of distance.  It's only then that fruitful future directions can be selected.
     With my poetry, if the inspiration is not 'swimming' then it has to be 'trees' - and that was the case with this poem.  I find the tree-change between winter and spring magical.  I never seem to find the apparent resurrection ordinary, even though I know it happens.  My mind drifted (as it does when I am sipping my special brew) to how early humankind must have viewed the transformation of an arid landscape into a verdant one.  One line I did not use from my notes was, "All language lives and dies in trees" and, while I am not convinced that I believe that, the line did contain something which I thought was important.  I felt that the life of trees (and plants) must have posed fairly important, basic, fundamental questions through human time as soon as human memory developed and distinctions were drawn.
     This (again) is a sonnet-like poem which seems, at the moment, to be a format that I am trying to explore.
     I am drawn to the opening and closing words, I feel that there is a satisfying circularity - which I do not necessarily see as comforting.
     This is a poem that, having written it, I am still coming to terms with.

Questioning

Corruption rots.  And makes the loam

that roots a single tree upon an empty plain.

The wind-curved branches punctuate

a thought – and apprehensive minds

form words, trying to tame

wild concepts breaking from the earth.

(The unforgiving lash of life.  Again,

luscious and fresh.  A green, green curse.)

Anchored fecundity runs rings around

the seasons’ captives struggling for faith:

bound tight in buds, or hidden in the sound

of leafless wood that, cut and burning,

spits and sizzles in the flames
mocking the mortality of death.

I wish (do I?) that I could say that I wrote the last line with the same confidence as John Donne.  I realise that any possible variant on the, 'Death thou shalt die' theme is bound to be seen as triumphalist and essentially Christian and a lineal descendent of that wonderful phrase.  I can only say that such thoughts are not mine.  I would point to the phrase, "The unforgiving lash of life" and suggest that there is little positive in this poem, and the "apprehensive minds" are "trying," not necessarily succeeding, in finding meaning.  I think the final line is a paradox or double negative or pun or animistic personification or something - but not comforting!