Ruby Robinson

There is an ash tree behind this house. You
can see it from our bedroom window.
If you stare at it for long enough, you'll see
it drop a leaf. Stare at it now, you said,
and notice the moment a leaf strips away
from its branch, giving a twirl. Consider this.

The ash tree unclothes itself Octoberly.
From beside our bed, fingering the curtain,
observe the dark candles at the top of
that tree, naked and alert, tending to the breeze.
A sheet of ice between the rooftops
and this noiseless sky has turned the air

inside out. Black veins of branches
shake against the blue screen on which they
hang. Small mammals are hibernating
in pellets of warm air under ground. But,
in spite of the cold, this ash tree does not shy
from shrugging off its coat, sloping its nude

shoulders to the night. So, you said, undo,
unbutton, unclasp, slowly remove. Let down your
hair, breathe out. Stand stark in this room until
we remember how not to feel the chill.
Stand at the window, lift your arms right up
like a tree. Yes — like that. Watch leaves drop.
...

She said the cornflake cake made her day,
she said a man cannot be blamed for being
unfaithful: his heart is not in tune with his
extremities and it's just the way his body
chemistry is. She said all sorts of things.

We saw a duck pond and a man with a tub
of maggots and a tub of sweet corn, we saw
the walled garden and the old-fashioned library
in the park, stopped for a cup of tea in a cafe
where we had the cornflake cake cut into halves

with the handle of a plastic fork. We saw yellow
crocuses growing in a ring around a naked tree,
the sky showing in purple triangles between
the branches. We looked in the window
of Butterworth's at the bikes: they were beautiful,

all of them. Gorgeous, she said. The sun was
pushing through the iced air and landing on us
on our heads and our shoulders and the backs
of our legs. We bought nail varnish remover
from Wilko's, a bath sheet, and two Diet Cokes.

She said she'd been talking to Jesus and God
because she didn't want to go to hell, although,
she said, correctly, we've been through hell
already, haven't we. She said a woman should
know her place, should wait. She lit a cigarette.
...

During the interlude, nothing is found or figured out. Minds unhitch
orbit-less. Eyes forget to blink. Plastic spoons, Häagen-Dazs, lipstick,
urinals, red curtains, left and right brain hemispheres are floating

in the gap between one universe and another, between a platform
and a train. A streetlight falters, an oak tree sheds its season in one breath,
black T-shirts reposition the world, clothed bodies descend,

pinned in place by tubes of searchlight. You hear somebody
refolding their legs, the squeak of a shoe's leather, a boiled sweet
rolling from one cheek to the other and it feels like - were the actors

to drop dead (from an after-party in the theatre bar last night,
that someone spiked) and soldiers, politicians, vicars, presidents,
the actors' mothers, sisters, brothers, the actors' fathers to burst in,

sprint past the blocks of seats, beat the corpses, rape them, set dogs
on them - judges and juries would look on through gleaming faces
as we look on now for fifteen minutes, breathing out, breathing in.

Years pass. Some shout their pain from a soundproof box
until, startled by the score from the pit, the light peeled back,
a triangle struck, we see ourselves rise from the stage and play on.
...