The Potted Tree - Alison Clark
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”
The Potted Tree
I knew I would miss the woodland. The red squirrels, the wooden acorn, the hide. The smell of pine needles, and the evoked memories of camping in the hot sun from many years ago. But I had you.
I remember wanting you. Researching, planning, and thinking about you. But not buying you, or planting you, or the day that you arrived. The blur of that time means memories are fragments, tiny pieces of hope in amongst, scans, surgery and a much wanted recovery.
I have kept you potted and close by for the last year. Allowing myself to see your tight, wispy, dusty red blooms as a marker of hope for when I can explore the woodland again. I needed that connection, between outside and in. Not actually realising this was a metaphor for everything that was happening then and now.
You survived the constant rain, ice, snow, ice, rain, snow when others did not.
And now the spring has come again, full circle, the rhythms of life continuing, a reminder of how things can be, and maybe once were.
So perhaps it is time for you to be in the ground, to give the same cyclical hope to others, as we both emerge beyond the patio. A witch hazel for all to admire yet containing the secrets of those lost days.
Alison Clark - awaiting bio
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