Cold Trees

A river of mist fell upon those cold trees,
and in the foreground an old stone bridge,
with fairy lights weeping along the anchorage,
held a dribble of lorries. A bread van became
a grubby, damp snail and softened
into the brownery of city dusk—
the cemetery of many an urban dream.

What summer made, autumn dismantled.
Above, the attics are ransacked, with a single
magpie picking at the spoils. Nests are gone.
Now these cold trees have a winter purpose:
to freeze the poignance of their own being,
that the quiet angst of city beings might join forces.

London Planes, pocked and mottled,
whittled thin by the blades of mist,
lactescent from the seep of the moon,
array their steely limbs to halt a ruinous wind.
And once again they become unknowable,
drawing farther and deeper into the gorge of night.