The Wishing Tree

Kathleen Jamie

I stand neither in the wilderness

nor in fairyland

but in the fold 

of a green hill

the tilt from one parish

into another.

To look at me

through a smirr of rain

is to taste the iron

in your own blood

because I hoard 

the common currency

of longing: each wish

each secret assignation.

My limbs lift, scabbed

with greenish coins

I draw into my slow wood

fleur-de-lys, the enthroned Brittania.

Behind me, the land

reaches toward the Atlantic.

And though I'm poisoned

choking on the small change

of human hope,

daily beaten into me

look: I an still alive—

in fact, in bud.

____________________________________________________________________