Peter Larkin
Hollow Allow Woods, 3: (bowl / trees / dome)
How a co-venture (sting of vacuity, prick of trees) installed its canopy stratus of
rootable figments but penultimate in capsule-offering which takes leaf only a
single depth away from porch of sky whose branches are a lull from cranking in
gulf a hollow spent-away regroups the victim virtues of sacrifrontal
woodland tendrils curl apart a resnared dome of green above spare desertion—
even lacking how these haggards lurk but abrasives in shoot enough for weakly
vertical insertion
a branch acrostic
quips absent nervures
of a lost ground’s
vertical striation
it might openly
respite its narrows
the tallest way
ascent’s no longer
concise surface
new plaiding over
any root-slate
within hollow
occlusive retrievals
steal every mid-
texture set before
mine unprovisional
open sky, now a
content of perfect
removal regains
a stone hovering
Positioned void granted a crackle of exposure reknit by that tactical admission
onto whose severals new separable skin marks a shedding that is all for taller sides
of the lengths of itself no longer laterally contained the deviation has to be
trunk-specific as trained on the sky’s own untouchables never any further than a tip’s
suffered unbowing
Where hollow begins to tumble through its bin of concessions, branch convection
tepid enough for infill waging recovery aisles until its scoop is bundled in with
passage towards some unhurting skimpily roofed not without limp hurtles to
sphere where an apparent leavening presses on it abashed sky could no longer dash
this filmiest sheen of depth onto any downward retention that trees might saddle
any green rubble to such pallid gaps
greasing the tangle-norm
sliding a thicket
where it bunches and
indurates, consent begins the
abrogation-caps of
justified crown
wedged trees in-
solvent uppermost
speed their knapped alarms
in fate, within gear
to wait on such
vertical relapses
from entrapment
With trees backing a random tilth there could only be vertical remuneration light
sanding at the lean from branch dries out in valid coast of crest applied sky doesn’t
regale a lost surface but pillories it, poles towards its refluct stand, then riffles over
according to gleanable cravings of sky the original quarry bowl didn’t know its
own swerve but at this soldered vacuum is in lieu of that exact suction of extraction
What sinks any prospecting beech onto new embedding it lives out of cavities
which can’t be what interior it is untethereds of confined diversity tread gaps
of upshot into what it is not leaving off traipses the stakes of dropped traffic onto
sky any affinity between intent and container is long since better removable upon
slims of an upright condition
englobing some motes
finds hollowness
coaxing the trees
fixed leaching onto
feedables of sky, a
prism of tinctures
filtering off this
bottoming reflex,
a prison tree starved
into radials
never ownmost
scoured to exposure
but insofar
sown hoist = canopy
which allowance kicks
back as will maim
at sky, never less be-
hind its evens each
way the punches
into gauze beset
with crumple-zone
Foliages as a musk of secondary detention thronging right across the directional span
of recomplied flow diagonal giving out at taper from which there is no tertiary
abstention from an unaffordable pool of sky the hollow’s own flare is now
primary propension these trees put up a baffle against clean mirroring invite
from hollow skies whichever eye to eye is steady refraction but weaker cross-
defensive lash petty offering might follow out a tie of co-figuration, skimped rank
blanket taken to vertical image
Peter Larkin‘s three collections of poetry are Terrain Seed Scarcity (2001), Leaves of Field (2006) and Lessways Least Scarce Among (2012). He contributed to The Ground Aslant: an Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry (2011) and published a book of academic essays, Wordsworth & Coleridge: Promising Losses in 2012. A new collection, Give Forest Its Next Portent, is due out from Shearsman later this year.