prologue

root, bark, leaf - yggdrasil the guardian tree branching out and
across many worlds.
root, bark, leaf - yggdrasil's early days and late nights journeying
this multiverse.
root, bark, leaf - yggdrasil our guardian tree carving where
past-present-futures collide

1
moors above, smokemonster below and my longings for
beyond. teessides street-lights, gasflares, bonfires - who in
their solitude didn't rhyme the night-sky alight? yet each
morning made anew - sun-warp, leaf-bright, web-dew.
pulling keys off ash-trees - those single-winged seeds - and
pickling the greenest, not everything is syrup as i have learnt.
a friend brings rowan jelly, hold that up against sun-warp,
leaf-bright, web-dew and you will be transported too. still
points in the tippings of child-destiny, aye. cleveland moors
above, smokemonster below, and my longing for beyond

2
this mazer, this one who amazes, who amazes me still, spent
their childhood in a hedge. clambering years inside that great
knotted length. read in their eyes the shapeshift-imagined back
and rooting. of course, that was now and this is then - how
time circles, times circling yes, and not as clockface, rather the
roll-and-tumble raven in long-flight, cascading ever-game
thermals, that feather-river of all. how in any hundred foot of
hedge each plant found means a hundred years of life.
hawthorn, blackthorn, beech, sweet-briar, dog rose, holly,
bramble, rowan, honeysuckle and hop and that great woven
wall goes right back to the writing down of north myths.
smokemonster's hedge was one species - municipal, rightangled,
evergreen. once, this wee blob pink at me feet. had i
stepped in bubblegum? then blob-pink starts scrattling: beak
wider than the imagined future. i place that tiny croak back to
its nest, a rune only time will read

3
above roseberry topping, clouds were longboats, dragons,
lungs. and up ahead this weather-worn, this beech-nut, this
gargoyle, words slow as volcano.
- you placed that fallen fledgeling back to nest.
- howdya?
- one wish.
-but howdya?
- this is about you no me. one wish now, what would it be?
- a story then.
- aah, a dreamer. they say two ravens - hugin and munin,
thought and memory - sit one to each my shoulders. truth
is, i was called to their flight. what i have learnt is you must
write your own story. lonely is it no? roots like iron, but
always looking to blossom, even in midwinter. for you a joke
: why do bees strike? for more honey and shorter working
flowers!
i look into a great whorled pool, forged and furrowed where
his eye should. the haar swallows moors around while a pair
of ravens caa-caak caa-caak in warp and weft

4
raven-we above all your cloud appreciation societies, catchme-
if-you-can out of asia, bridging greenland to america - our
winged speak, how our wings speak. an unkindness of ravens
- no - call us a kindliness rather! didn't we give away stars,
water and fire, aye, when the whole of creation hung from
cruel eagles lodge and you cowered before. not raven! we
snatched creation up, loop-outlooping the chase, finding just
where to hang up the stars; out-out-tumbling the chase until
exactly where to let flow and fall all waters of this world;
wing-whistle-outwit and ... only firebrand in beak and don't
laugh no, our feathers singed from that day on, raven-we
dropping firebrand down among rock. how you learnt to
strike two stones, sparks firing, and off-and-outing. and now?
high above your cacophony, our brothers/sisters wingclipped
in london tower, they call out free-free, free us, free!

5
that long-ago mead of climbing out and above and what i
have seen in the clouds since. odin giving an eye to drink
from that wisdom well, hanging nine days from yggdrasil so
his mind could fill with poetry, and still we search for that
midwinter garden in full blossom. now fix to memory,
völuspá. vö-lus-pá! this wise-woman's runes and ruins, dust
and dusk of a thousand years, back when volcanoes spat the
skies dark and the rising sea threatened to wash all away

6
waters rising, mountains burning, summer after summer the
sunshine black, do you see? white mud spattering brown
leaves of yggdrasil, do you see yet, do you see? beaks
trembling with red soot, words break, their long-line sundered,
do you see? at last moon-dark, earth-sink, tremble-star.
moon-dark, earth-sink, tremble-star. is this the void? no. that
wise-woman vö-lus-pá clings with iron roots, seeing beyond.
seize beyond. we may yet break this leash. break this leash!
arise a second time, earth from ocean, and beautifully green.
see? see! earth from ocean, a second time, and beautifully green

epilogue

leaf - bark - root : - this guardian tree of yggdrasil. how
those ravens thought and memory rebuild their nest, rebuild
their nest, rebuild, times circlings. so take a sapling, a
youngling, a wildling, allow their branching out and across
multiverses, carving where past-present-futures collide