Kate Williams

A poem of mine for Halloween and the winter ahead:

Wicked Winter Tree, published in Moondust & Mystery, Oxford University Press, 2002 , and in The Iron Book of Tree Poems, Iron Press, earlier this year. I also included it in my own book, Swinging through the Sky (now out of print but available second hand), with this illustration:

Wicked Winter Tree

Beware the Wicked Winter Tree
when it twists its twilight spell:
when it tangles itself into witches’ hair,
black and bleak as a bottomless well,
and scrapes the sunset bare.

Watch out for the Wicked Winter Tree
when it sweeps up the evening sky,
for who can tell what sneaky spell
may linger there, in its witches’ hair,
waiting for a passer-by?

Kate Williams