The Medusa Tree Poem by Tom Hamilton

Sergeant Kilmer tapped me
on the shoulder at 3 am he said:
'The flowers are very pretty near Ourcy.
Just look out your back window
if you don't believe me.'

The front of the trunk is thick like a gorilla's throat.
But it fragments farther up like a standing cat-o-nine tails.
Which shatters and cracks against a wounded sky.
Above malignant knobs and knots rise the bliztkrieged limbs
as bald of leaves as your chemotherapy woman.
Boughs too coarse and mean for even Poe's bird to roost.
Roots raping the moistness of the choice ground.
Its girth against the breast of the earth like a succubus.
In amazing mazes below the snow glazed surface
I fear I hear tentacles hunt blood filled vermin.

Did it grow unlearned centuries ago to protect me
from the unseen breeze speaking beings of fathom forests?
Perched on the wood's edge more terrible than them.
The natural warden of a prison for spirits.

Or will it talk me into suicide one night?
As foliage scrapes the roof to pose as muffled hooves or voices.
No need to bloom the choices; those red and green apples.
I'm already corrupted by one hundred thousand Eves.
Death is just a nice evening, a warmth from the cold.

When I shudder awake in that whisper draped world,
like taking one foot out of a frozen mud puddle.
My sleep muddled head like a cabbage in the sink.
I claw back the curtain and sometimes I'm certain.
I can see a grim grin instead of an ax mark
and features contorted in the swirls of dark bark.
The branches pulled back by the gale like with hair pins.
Writhing serpentine against wild hissing split ends
which shake violently 'till spent
against violated violets.