Diane Simkin
Neighbours
I couldn’t stop them cutting down the trees,
I tried to reason but they wouldn’t listen.
It was their land
and they could do exactly as they pleased.
Their hearts were set on change for change’s sake.
‘We want to make a new garden,’ they said,
‘to start from scratch, these trees are in the way,
they’ve got to go.’
In arrogance they thought they could create
a better garden than the one God made.
The chain-saw massacre did not take long.
The noble Fir - stripped of all dignity;
the lovely Birch
- murdered, her limbs dismembered on the ground;
Willow and Holly butchered where they stood.
The birds and I surveyed the graveyard wreck,
a missile strike would have the same effect.
A century
dismantled in a day, and all to feed
the funeral pyre of mankind’s vanity.
That was a year ago. The ‘For Sale’ sign
has just gone up. It didn’t quite work out,
they’re moving on.
Time pressed, the garden never did get done,
and nature’s slowly taking back her own.
The grass has grown up through the rotting trunks,
and just today I saw amongst the dead
a miracle.
A tiny sycamore, six inches high,
planted by God to set the balance straight.
Page(s) 29
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