Yew

This is one of my uneasy, 'not sure how long I'll be brave enough to keep it online for' poems, so it might suddenly disappear into the night. Sorry for the darkness of it, whoever reads it (though it ends hopefully), I suppose I could cut some of it so that it was less dark. 

The Yew's early pollen

is sometimes plucked by a bee

in a fleeting Spring romance

of bitter honey.

Creamy puffs of glitterlight, and

hungry -- we can all be lured,

though it is the night

that the Yew sings to, bees abed,

to court its stars, to wear the moon

as a celestial hat. 
 

I remember sitting in a room,

listening to people talk about me,

or not listening at all, perhaps,

the coffee table and plastic cups,

his clean, white coat, his badge,

my speechlessness. 
 

The Yew is a dark tree;

in graveyards, people are planted

like fields of dead, bones tangled 

in a Yew's roots, the tree, vigilant 

for new interments. 
 

I remember asking to shave my legs

in hospital, the bath sat, as if staged,

in the centre of the room, a nurse perched

in the doorway, on watch. 
 

And whilst I could lie upon this earth

and let the soil and trees devour me,

I see, too, how nothing has ever sought life

as much as a Yew yearns for eternity.

So I will grow old quietly,

though I am still drawn to Winters, and

their spears of cold, I know now,

that all this time, I had been mistaking

death for the peace of relinquishment.

 
 
Image is from here: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Overton_Yew_Tree.jpg