Ancient YEW & Ivy Grove

Ivy covers dark, covers deep
roots of yew, running through
the mound, tump, tumulus, sidh,
gorsedd of three-boled tree
writhen beneath the written
epitaphs on grave stones, knitted
like mycelium, like leaf mould
in dark layers underground,
laid down like the dead
who have left the world
absent from the presence
we grasp here daily, present
in the forgotten not-world
they inhabit, presences
we conjure, cannot touch
not because under but beyond
the presence of I, somewhere
in the absence of not-I.

Above ground the tree
reaches for the sky,
brings not-world into world
in a spray of green needles
which do not fall
and sticky red arils
which do, year on year
here and not-here
not-yew then yew
eternally rooted
in ancestral presence.