every time the tree surgeons
chainsaw the plan tree’s growth
back to fingerless knuckles
at the tip of each bough,

it always seems that they cut
too hard and too severely –⁠
every spring, as the blossom
vanishes from pavements

and magnolias resign themselves
to greenness, I ask what life
could re-spark from these clumped, dumb fists?

Green finds a way
our of the knot,
like pagan shoots
through an old religion

poems slow curve heraclitus in south london

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