Osier (a poem)

Withies of Osier,

prithee, be woven!

Runnels, blood-wood,

your heart become stoven.

Smote of oak truncheon,

switches of beech;

crude roots, pithy shoots,

boughs barren with reach.

Thicket and thorn.

Cricket in black.

Life in a copse,

and want of the lack.

Withers' thrown rider—

hither be habit.

Wont meadows, bedfellows,

roots choking jackrabbits.

Deepen the ditch.

Rood in dead dark;

Come black rot and ruddy

the death of its heart.

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“But why?”

After reading Lauren Groff’s Matrix, I was really fascinated with the idea of writing with lots of old Germanic roots and addressing a certain similar theme.