Winter Brambles

Bramble stems in leaf,
untidy lines of a poem
with hooked thorns
snagging clothes and hands,
older stems, purple as wet ink,
spreading through trees
and over dried leaves.

Today I’ve cut them to the ground,
till my old dry hands too dripped bloody ink.

So now from easy garden paths
trees are skeletal, architectural.

But Wild and Waiting
the brambles soon regrow,
to grasp and bind and pierce
and make their presence felt.