A poem by Nicola Healey.

‘No, we couldn’t let that tree fall’

– Robert Selby, ‘Wild Cherry’

The year after my father died
trees started disappearing from the garden.

First, the ailing mock orange, reduced
to a stump (with one shoot). Without warning, uprooted,
tossed onto the bonfire.
I tried to find it in the groaning pyre,
touched its wound, to say sorry, thank you.

In the height of summer, the willow tree’s
cascade was cut back. It threatened the house.
The gardener overdid it – the whole cooling canopy
shorn, like a botched haircut. Like Samson
I lose strength.

I can’t watch the light filter through its tapers,
or feel its silky leaves.
Just expanse, bright light, nowhere to hide.

The giant evergreen, crushing the hedge, had to go.
I was warned this time, twice;
sleepless nights, rotten core…

Everywhere I look there are raw sawn stubs
where once was greenery.

I stopped fighting for them, tried to detach.
Nothing I say ever sways this
determination.

The leaning lilac may be next.
I’m already mostly numb.
Indifference, an anaesthetic, prepares my stump.

I worry one morning, I’ll wake up
and there’ll be no shelter left.

*

Nicola Healey’s work has appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Hopkins Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The London Magazine and elsewhere. Her first pamphlet, ‘A Newer Wilderness’, was published by Dare-Gale Press in April 2024. She lives in Buckinghamshire.