Poem 17: Chestnuts and Cleaning Up; 26 poem challenge

Pollarded old chestnuts supply lots of fallen branches.

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

 

 

An abandoned and ancient chestnut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Old chestnut trees in the Sierra Aracena

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Jungle with thorns on finca

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Chestnut flowers

 

 

 

 

 

 

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!

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/georginas-26-challenge-i-am-going-to-write-26-poems-about-the-wild-flora-and-fauna-here-on-our-woodland-finca-in-spain-i-will-post-these-on-my-blog

 

* 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.

 

Reforestation needed, old chestnut trees in abandoned woods