imprisoned by hoardings declaring
the eventual meeting of the circle line
the raintree speaks in prison garb tone
the green tongue of its previous guise
now covered in a rough coat of slur

i talk to him as if through inch-thick
perspex seeing but not sensing
what gives in such one-time meet
exceptionally awarded permission
he resigns to his last contact

in the sky the steel cranes swoop
in the ground the confined roots
again redrawn by an urban plan
to suit the boom of a bored pile
the articulated dozer and the tip

cannot feel you so i close my palm 
they might as well hang you at dawn
dignified death above living hell
in a square of cell a diamond of earth
as they did to the angsana in braddell
 

speck

reading mary oliver
under a canopy
of morning glories
facing infinity, almost
i took care to dissuade
a little green speck 
of an insect from
sitting on the open book
lest he should become
the ironical pressing in
Between poetic lines on nature