The things I Learned from the Copper Beech - Robert Seatter
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 things I Learned from the Copper Beech
The beaten-metal look of light
especially against
the gas-blue October sky –
and the sound that flare of gas made
in the kitchen below my bedroom:
the un-seeable world
The window frames full of it,
day and night, a gallery of seasons:
come again it said, you have a loyalty card
for looking
The sound of its leaves, in layers at night:
its multiple whispers, perhaps I learned
obliqueness there…
or followed its voices
down a long wooden-floored corridor –
remember schooldays full of those,
and the defining moment
when you walked down one of them
finally as yourself
The ragged, massy silhouette of it:
a mountain casting a protective shadow
on my bed, my room,
but once a branch of it made the moving shape
of a burglar on our roof,
so I woke my father in the middle of the night –
he switched on the light,
gave the space corners:
is that where fear goes?
The constancy of it, the need to clasp it,
arms around: love in all its concentric rings,
time’s tangible heartwood
And the message now from a single leaf of it
copper-bright on a later lawn of a different house,
reminding me of the sap of me –
all the way back
to who I was then
That metal, that blue:
the shining, lit-up world.
Robert Seatter: Published five poetry collections, latest coming May 2021: The Museum of Everything (Seren). Works at BBC as Head of BBC History. www.robertseatter.org.uk
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