We slip by the brick estates
patterned like a lizard’s back,
then suburbs where the conifer’s
black flames stand sentinel;
of the giant leaves of planes,
wade against the smoking tide
of insect-faced and swollen cars.
We skirt the sewage works,
cross over the motorway’s grey
cortege to the dark
matter of the countryside –
Egypt’s pylons scanning the fields,
evil spores in the undergrowth,
antennae needling the clouds –
and we just keep on toiling away
from town, setting our sights
on the grace and madness
of burning trees, as far as where
the truant woods dance
in a light that is breaking all the rules,
to the point at which we start to learn
to stand inside the fire.