Hedgerow after Roadwork

What was the ragged hedgerow of sally trees
has become an open wound of broken branches—
white gashes, torn leaf and muddy root exposed
and open to the weather, appalled by light.

Thinking it the way of this world, you take
one look, shrug your noli me tangere shoulders,
and walk on by. Mist thickens
over the green of Letter Hill, blanching it,

and a robin hops about in the wreck
of its hedgerow, chanting a canticle of praise
to that deep but dazzling darkness that
shapes the maze of what happens, the lord

who holds the bird in hand and the two evicted
from the bush, holds the savaged sally tree
itself, not to mention the worm that-turning
away from this fresh bewilderment of light—

feels for only a moment the scorch
of robin-breath, comfort-touch of wet earth
that is all it knows on earth and all
it needs to know before the dark closing.

Copyright © 2009 Eamon Grennan All rights reserved
from Crab Orchard Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission