The Trees (Ashes to Ashes)

An elegy on the death of the ash tree

The ash tree, how daunting! How haunting your swan song

Whose plaintive refrain from the woodlands I hear.

Was ever before such a sorrowful song sung

To sadden the heart as your dieback draws near?

My sweetheart from childhood again is before me

As when, in the shade of your shadow, we lay,

Not knowing its darkness, in times once so carefree,

Was sadly foretelling the day you would die.

Your bird-bearing branches no longer will welcome

The woodpeckers, blue tits and soft-cooing doves,

How foul is the fungus that fetters your freedom

To flourish forever in copses and groves!

Though round and about me the chainsaws are squealing

I’ll always recall how you gladdened my heart

With sunlight and sky through your canopy smiling,

But then little thought I how soon we should part.