Thomas Harrison Poet Personification

Veins of a Bonfire

and for our fifth anniversary, wood;
at that age love’s roots are hopeful, flexible,
damp: feeling fresh earth with fingers 
stretching and toes padding. A landscape found.

My memories are rings of bark in rotation,
aging and looping nostalgic sap solidified, held
within amber - a slow golden molasses of 
year within decade within time within
circular wooden promises moving, expanding.

For my scabs there are bent twigs,
plucked and picked by a curious child.

My eyes have been bugs, dark and closed below trunk,
shielded and sheltered in mud before opening 
with experience: growing tails bushy and teeth
sharp, becoming acorns that gaze and look
upward, that blink and spy, that climb with
squirrels hoarding their plunder near clouds -

and my skin, once covered in leaves
green, dotted in crisp morning dew, now
changes colour to curling oranges of
autumn and stubborn brown creases, 
cracked into wrinkled veins of bonfire 
clusters dry. A prepared pyre.

Yet my mouth – forever poised, 
forever responding – is fern, is evergreen
that doesn’t wilt but gapes and breathes
and learns and beckons: planting seeds
and watering saplings young, word by 
word, syllable by syllable, bulb by 

bulb

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