Today a low November sun
Sketches the bones of poplars
Black on clear blue
Beside the farmhouse
A 200-year-old teak
Writhes against heaven.
Obsolescent dream
And dumped forever
Under similar flat fields.
Distant through the fog
Of war they'd have thought
Still the same and
Irredeemably changed.
Now as the clock ticks towards
Eleven, the stillness quakes
An ambulance races
Howling down the by-pass
A jet fighter screams low across
And all the quiet gardens.
WILFRED JOHN
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/writhes-against-heaven/