CALVARY

CALVARY

CALVARY

Three trees stand on the brim 
of the lake, on a slight incline
for all the world like crosses
on the Hill of Golgotha.


The good thief and the bad thief
are in verdant health but the horse-
chestnut standing between them
is dead. Its bald form cuts 


a shocking figure in mid-summer
Monaghan, where all is emerald,
Iime, apple greens – bosky, ferny
mossy. The crucified tree stands


at maybe thirty feet, dwarfing 
the other two, so that I want to say
a father, with a child on either side.
What happened to the old man


to stop the juices from flowing 
through his venous tissue, stop 
his respiratory system from 
converting light to sugar ? Must he 


stay planted here, forever dead, in full view
of his children, while the blind universe 
whirls its catherine wheels round him ? 
Today, for example, nifty white waves 


are barreling over the surface of the lake, 
but the upright corpse does not respond
to the wind’s tickling, its ashen branches
poking dead fingers at an ice-cream sky.


Will no-one take it down ? Would its old bones 
not feed a stove, even if they no longer 
move to the wind’s creaky tune, no longer 
bounce conkers off passing caterpillars ?