Oak Bracket

In the corner of the cemetery,
an ancient tree is edged with death.

A schism in the bark has been stoppered
with weeping polypore: a poor bandage.

The fungal body fruits like honeycomb,
oozing amber beads, a fragrant wound.

This loaf of mushroom, spongy and split
like a pomegranate, is unrepentant.

It is a scavenger, searching for the rotting,
a trunk with a creak like a death rattle.

A eulogy is whispered through roots,
perfunctory condolences prickle

in the soil, and a subterranean web
sends out a welcome to starving kin:

come, it says, feast. 

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Bex Hainsworth is a poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. Her work has appeared in Atrium, Nimrod, The McNeese Review, and bath magg. Walrussey, her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry, is published by the Black Cat Poetry Press.