The House that Jack Built

the first trees were felled and sailed in, wrecked, then slept an age in the northern sun, blackening to iron                    were found by horsemen leading their horses and raised as cloud’s axles, rafters of night, a god’s gates were passed through, seen from miles off, rolled the sun and moon along their lintels, rooted, put out leaves                     for a second time creaked, tasted the rain, held the wind to their hearts while the horsemen streamed like their horses’ manes into the dark, their fires black smudge in the subsoil, their bridles of gold underground lived long, grew great were a second time felled, dressed                   were sharpened to stakes and raised as a fort by farmers who’d followed their ploughs to the treeline for fuel to bake the pots their ashes were buried in with a scattering of grain like stars                 each small clay heaven still hangs in the earth were overgrown, steered clear of called dragon’s ribs devil’s cot                 were nested among, rotted down beside harbored foxglove, eggshell owl pellet, primrose, honeycomb were glazed, split put out buds of malachite, blossoms of salt, grew again, put out small translucent fruits named by the women who prized them teardrops, ice apples, clarities were offered bread, dolls of woven grass, plaits of hair, coins with the obverse ground smooth, beads of  turquoise twisted, straightened, filled with rooks, held again the wind to their hearts, creaked, scraped off the sunlight’s scales with their leaves, were a grove, grew manes of lichen, were murmured under, gave counsel on still nights of open doorways the dead came through on horseback or shouldering flails or bearing chimes of ice apples                       gave shelter were felled for it, their roots ripped up by a legion’s engineers and left like brainstems rucked on the earth were timber but the pit saws snarled in their rings of iron broke teeth on the flints that welted their sapwood were good for nothing, stacked, fired, marched away from, sucked up the flames, hissed, smoked, glowed blood- black, were tempered, twice- forged                     bided on site as battle-stain, in story as Head Wood lay half-buried, grown over, still hot were stumbled upon by navigators, hit with hammers and rang until they were made lock gates to slam shut on the slow wet grew green, slime- faced, knew runoff, weird particulates, held fast against drizzle’s tonnage, the nudge and bonk of a bloater        were left stinking when the water died stood strange in currents of deep grass, open wide flexed, hungered once more for the light, bulged, branched, rived out of their lacquer, unfurled leaves of oilskin, shook down clots of blossom            lived long, grew great weren’t felled but walled in, roofed over, giving span to a farmhouse, hanging a hall from their outstretch, bracing floor after floor on their inosculating joists, which sang to a barefoot tread and were called home of shadows             heart of the wind Lamanby