This poem is a reflection on our very old chestnut tree orchards and the need to ‘clean’ up between the spaced trees. For many years I have left lots of areas to just grow and little chestnut forests abound. A well spaced orchard is in contrast to the way trees grow in a wild forest. As always thanks to Dverse poets who rekindled my muse some years ago. There are always good poems to discover there and inspiring prompts. https://dversepoets.com
Chestnut Orchards and Wild Forest
How does the ancient chestnut feel, on its own,
Without its young growing up around it?
For centuries, it keeps on trying to not die alone.
Trees planted out at even spaces in the wrong places.
In between too much light not shade
For the new chestnuts to be made.
The trees own sweet fruit must delve down deep
And grow the root, the stem, the leaf.
But the young are cursed and must be cleaned
For never will it grow the fruit we want to eat.
The wild now grows between those planted trees,
Unkempt, unruly, a wide variety of lives
Breathing, green but dirty children
For here wild abandon thrives,
Tall thin pine, brushed thick ivy vine,
Arbutus Unedo with red fruit, wild glow
Light metal viburnum berries, turpentine
And thin young chestnuts take their time.
Tree time and the old ones no longer weep
As they feel the roots meet up in the deep.
To call the land dirty when it is full of green
‘Su ci o*’ may sound sweeter to the ear
Than the one that rings with unclean
And all the range of life we love to ‘lim pi o’*
Forgive us trees as we do not know
How to live and how to grow.
I am slowing down on the 26 poems so might need to speed up. There is always plenty to write about at Navasola and plenty to do! The heat is in abeyance and has gone to London where it is hotter than Seville. Trees could be our saviours in this climate race to the hottest places, especially the oldest ones. But with threats in the Amazon again of worse fires and the proposed destruction in India of an ancient forest in order to mine poor grade coal ahttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/08/india-prime-minister-narendra-modi-plans-to-fell-ancient-forest-to-create-40-new-coal-field
And of course in the U.K. ancient trees are felled for the HS2 train link which will cut a journey time by half an hour but destroy some of the little ancient woodland we have left here.
We must be hopeful and active in this struggle for the heart of nature. Please help a nature charity by sponsoring my challenge and it will keep me going!
* sucio is Spanish for ‘dirty’ and wild, abandoned areas are referred to by this word. Limpio is the word for clean. And so instead of clearing as we do in English we clean the land. In reality we destroy a lot of habitats for our attempts at farming.
NavasolaNature 