Elms Elongated

For the sheer gorgeousness of the title (which are also the concluding lines of a poem), Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Towards the Distant Islands ... but also for the one line that turns upon spelling out a length of vowels.

He made no answer for a time, squinting out at the ancient ellum
That rose and descended again on the knob of pasture

I have hunted for the meaning of "ellum" and can only come to the conclusion that Hayden Carruth is hearing the word "elm" through the Latin "ulmus" and is inviting the reader to carry the eye through the apprehension of the tree that rises straight-trunked into the air to its canopy which falls back towards the earth like an open umbrella, a large open umbrella, a very large open umbrella.

For elm, OED does attest 19th century dialect form - ellum.

And so for day 311
21.10.2007