Viscous honey, harvested resin, drips from
heartwood via delicate channels, shedding
gold as needles fall from the branches: autumn’s
brilliant bounty.
 
Called Venetian turpentine, resin flows if
warmed, to form a transparent glaze for oil paint.
Globes, too, gleam in luminous coatings. Sacred
sealant for shipping.
 
Daubed on wounds and violins, flesh and tones are
salved and tempered. Conifer-kin, though you, larch,
hold out: stay deciduous, drop quills, safeguard
vitality’s flame.
 
Menaced now, when water-mould spores are borne on
downpours, bringing cankerous lesions, oozing
dark blood. Resin’s rival, such fluid – die-back’s
proof and prognosis.
 
Larch, stay fearless, shrugging off expectations,                 
though platoons of pine acquiesce, evergreen
all through winter – complaisant. You I love – your
gifts, your resistance.