Death of a Tree

The spitting gutter and low moan
of chain-saw first drove away
those who lived in you,
lived in the breath you everyday made for them
since first you pushed yourself up.
The blackbird went pink-clattering away,
the nuthatch sidled off,
the mistle thrush strained,
cried clamour from your tall tops-
pointed herself Westwards.
The brown comma of a wren ticked herself off.
So were you felled and silently you fell,
offering no resistance, no arms
but those you had held aloft with grace;
offering no sound but sad, soughing sagacity.
At the feet of your killers, you blanched
not from fear, no, but at the place where your white meat
was butchered, measured up.
Away from the butchering,
the trail of your life blood was drawn
over your own soil.

Swiftly then were you dispatched
after three hundred years of service;
feeding, warming your cold-hearted killers
when they complained of cold;
shading them when they complained of heat;
making their warships and weapons of wood;
furnishing the pages of their gilt-edged wisdom,
of their whims.

Even in the end you feted them
with sweet wood-smoke
in your expiry, gave your cremated self
to feed the land they slayed you on,
stamped upon.

In an awful hour your dear presence,
your crowned majesty
had come and gone,
leaving a hard-edged vacuum,
a choking absence,
a glaring, hollow horror.