Cork Oak Day

On the day, the leafy path you choose is,
you both agree, straight out of
classic children’s literature, and worthy
of every fecund adjective.

Dank, internal, wonderful, the air is big
with hush and broken twigs, the undergrowth
marvellously receptive
to crawling knees and flesh.

Even the cork oak twists out the ground
with a moist squeaking sound.
Between breathless swallows you, together,
mould the plastic stopper (tighter and less permeable).

Synthetics will be the way of the future.
You are both nervous but prepared, eager to kiss
farewell
to the long teenage years of rehearsal.

Stunned and spreading like a birth,
you pin yourselves against the cork oak’s
spongy arms, your flesh, like Christ’s,
absorbing everything.