Deadwood? - Daniel Harwood
One of the Top 24 submissions in our 2022 Urban Tree Festival writing competition.
Deadwood?
I have had it
with forest-bathers,
foragers, and
connectors-with-nature.
What has this wood become?
I am snapped and separated
in this trampled place
where adolescence dissolves in skunk,
birdsong is smothered by Labradoodle yelps
and the lycra-drone of urban fitness
fades and cracks the shy anemone.
Last spring,
this beech-chapel’s
gentle sanctuary
slowed my thready pulse.
But now the broken copse
pulls my plane-bark scabs.
Underneath, there is bone-pink hardness,
I am so raw that the brush of a fern burns me.
My womb is a hard knot.
Turning to leave,
my last glance gathers in
her boughs
still green and true.
A squirrel scurries at her base and
an airborne liquorice allsort
gently thumps my leg.
An early bumblebee, fuzzy-fresh.
Is it too late
for green alchemy
to soften me?
To drain away
down trickling brook
my hate for human beings,
and send out wind-soft strands of faery silk
to mend my splintered thoughts?
The dogs have quietened now so
I will start
by sitting still,
to meet this tree again,
to meet her,
her squirrel,
and her bee.
Daniel Harwood
I am a London Wildlife Trust volunteer. My writing is inspired by green spaces and the people and non-human living things I meet in them.
