What To Do If A Tree Falls On My House - Cheryl Markosky

11 Mar

One of the Top 24 submissions in our 2022 Urban Tree Festival writing competition.

What To Do If A Tree Falls On My House

Evacuate

Zeus, the God of thunder and lightning and rain and wind and war, wallops the scarlet oak, grizzled old-man-bark groaning. Amputated blood-branches and split-lobed foliage crackle
through the roof. I don’t want to leave the sacred tree, as you try to remove me, swallow me whole.

Call 999

You poke digits into your mobile, reminiscent of early seedlings nudging through soil. Magic emergency number to make everything better. Yet, it won’t bring back the resident chocolate-buff Treecreeper scoffing spiders, the Great Spotted Woodpecker’s high hammering, the miner bees, the bracket fungi.

Contact the insurance company

You say the riven oak can’t be saved, but the insurance will cover costs for its disposal. Before performing sacrificial rites, I want assurance that tomorrow Laura will swing on the blossoming bough, Luke will rescue the hesitant tabby tremble-clinging to a branch, Granny’s ghost will still rest on the bench knitted out of tumbled timber from the Great Storm of 1987.

Call 24-hour tree removal company

You ring the crisis tree service to be rid of the problem. But like the resilient oak, I won’t be uprooted. I wound-heal residual sawn-bone under bark skin, salvage scarred lumber. I know who I am with the timeworn oak. I know every acorn. Every taproot. Every sapling. Every season. Greek gods can never die. And as Zeus controls the movement of the stars in the sky, I plant acorns to rekindle the life cycle of the oak.