A smouldering sun and a flame-gold field
Challenge the darkness to shrivel and yield.
Why are these hooded conifers
Snarling that all the land is theirs?
They lean, they press, they crowd, they invade
That too-much brightness with too-much shade.
Like muggers or monks they watch and they wait,
Bound by their vow to obliterate
All that light and all that heat,
The somnolent sun, the wind-brushed wheat.
When conifers conquer, then Vincent Van Gogh
Must carve the remaining ear off.
Joan Morgan
June 5, 1995