Green Tree

The fox has been, its smell takes my voice away.
Here was a field, dykes run through spruce roots, stones and earth the burden for many backs.
On the radio science said that back pain is a head thing.
They never picked stones for days from frozen ground.
Children become adults with locked vertebrae.
Men planting these pines thirty years ago, and this oak two hundred, their backs curved under gravity's influence.
Nestled amongst needles and between rocks an occasional glass bottle from a broken brewery - thirst slaked on a hot day at the forestry.
Some time soon soft wood will fall hard and this oak may have lived long enough to breathe in the sun again.