Lime Tree, Oil on Board (Painting By Eoghan McGrath) by John Doyle

For seconds
there’s an impasse
in this billowing forest;
wise money
assumes day-time is trying to escape,
no,
perhaps it cried sanctuary here,
both entranced,
and firing each russet spark in every
crackle of brown,
every strangeness of being
we assume huddles beneath
those chambered limbs –
and what of those trees,
those dank trellised veins
waiting for a fix,
golden brown, or coffee sunrise,
the shape of a hammer-pinged bone
telling stellar apparitions how ugly they are,
its soot-sprinkled sag
an invitation for stars to
seek revenge,
all bets called briskly off

John Doyle Bio: The only good bio is a bio strung-up outside some gold-prospector’s wooden shack with his dog Jake sniffing at its last remaining remnants of sanguine flesh; So I will keep it simple, I’m from County Kildare, Ireland, and I love nothing more than stumbling across 3rd Division football games in Slovenia or Belgium on a Sunday morning as a welcome interlude while trying outsmart fellow bio hunters.