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.

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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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