A Fallen Tree

 

 

I wrote this poem immediately upom my return home after taking a long walk with my daughters dog Louis in Binstead Woods in Arundel a couple of years ago. 

Fallen Tree

 

A full-grown tree

Downed by the storms of late

Lays like an unconscious giant

Not so much uprooted

As is more common

When trees are felled by a tempest,

But viscously torn apart

As if by massive teeth,

Ripped asunder

Toward the base.

What force,

Completely smashed

This once lovely tree.

Clean exposed core wood

The colour of desert sand

Faces out and upward

Among huge splinters

That themselves give evidence

To the monstrous destruction.

Close to the sodden ground,

The torso, the corpse,

The recently sound trunk,

Has itself committed

An almost equal crime;

As it fell,

The sheer weight of the big tree

Brought about life’s finale

For two younger, weaker trees

That now involuntarily support it,

Slightly off the ground

Like the worlds strongest man

Lifting the Olympic medal winning weight.

Ivy still clings to the great mass

Stretched like a bow string over the

Decimated woodland giant

That has stood handsomely there

In the middle of a tight,

Closely tree-ed wood

Showing off the beauty of its

Abundant foliage for decades,

Now it lies, mangled, mutilated,

Humbled and beaten

Beyond any hope of repair,

Still sucking the last drops of sap

From the minute strands

Still attached with weakening sinew’s

To the stricken base,

And by that to the life-giving roots

Still firmly implanted in the ground.

No miracle surgery can save

The life of the broken tree.

The time it has left….

Is only in wait for the saw and axe.