Ash and its dying back

Flowering spectrums of lights that sit happy purples and sometimes greens and amber yellows.

Cluster forgotten winter black velvet buds.

The seasons do not matter, when matter fundamental to it’s material is standing dead

                                              still in its curves of opposing grey

that can’t quite fathom their leafy lights

can’t quite grasp the quality of its patterned hues.

All it knows is to expect four hundred years of maybe standing in woodlands of spirited moods.

It may help for you to be the tallest

     may help for you to be shade tolerant

                    may even help for you to demand more light than anyone else.

But even in mature circles of you,

you couldn’t quite save yourself from fungal jest.

The woodland is friend and foe.

And your Fraxinus beauty skips unknowing eyes.

Narrow crowns bleeding slivery smoke do not know who is next for the throne.

Uncertain legacies shave away the hairs of both male and female body trunks     – branch.

Fold hope into the leaves of the young,

hide it in the long stems of the youth, plant it in vascular systems of tomorrow.

The wind and the rain are carrying chakara’s necrosis and sapwood is scared,

heartwood can’t breathe and when she does only in gasps of pale that is losing the memory of grey.

Pathogens are moving chronic and the aging giant is moving resilient.

Ash keys keep falling and the birds they pick up their throaty songs to sing on other soils,

these strains are fading octaves of dieback breaking hymns.

If I close my eyes and breathe the sight of ghost wood, will I see ash?