The Tree Quotes

“Dylan writes of the heron-priested shore
and his sensation-seekers suitably amaze:
but the heron is no priest to sober eyes
as, like some litter-picker, it slips about
the sea-weed backs of skerries at low tide
(as often I have seen it in St. Andrews)
or stands grey and silent in the burn
like old grey rags hung among the reeds,
its cold eye and old-age pensioner look
(straggles of grey hair sticking out behind)
seemingly as vacant as the sky
till some frog stirs or an eel or trout drifts
near
and the javelin beak on the S neck leaps into
life:
or weary as Methuselah near his end
heavily flaps towards the patient woods
where the raucous heronry outcaws the rooks
and makes the trees a dirty aerial slum.”
― Tom Scott, The Tree: An Animal Fable