Stick - Gurnam Bubber
Long-listed written pieces of 250 words or under submitted to the 2021 Urban Tree Festival writing competition on the theme of “trees close to you”
Stick
Damp, dirty, covered in crud,
musty fusty bit of muck.
A splinter, once a tall tree proud,
now I am fallen to the ground.
Dull brown, unremarkable,
cast off, cast out, forgotten, forlorn.
I am weathered, withstood much, seen much.
My old names crumbled and lost.
A gnarled, striated slice of bark,
pale innards, splintered ends.
Constantly overlooked, instantly forgotten.
Not a shiny object of desire.
Invisible until tripped on, then cursed or thrown to the jaws of a hound.
Still, I have my secrets.
Musk of mysterious loam,
the geosmin scent of nature’s ancient magic.
Tiny grains of crystals glint on my skin,
mud encroaches, a prelude.
In the fecund dark I come into my own.
I am royalty.
The key to all life.
I create, participate and emancipate.
I look forward to my metamorphosis,
the earth’s enchantment working on my body.
Unseen creatures breaking, dissolving and dissipating me into smaller and smaller particles.
Until I am dust,
strewn on the earth,
pervading through and among my kin,
my second journey begins.
I am the womb of the forest.
Gurnam Bubber is a story teller for Trees for Cities and member of Out on the Page. He increasingly likes to dabble his toes in poetry.
Read other poems and prose on the Longlist
