Medicine Woods
(After Atillah Springer)

Take these woods like a dose of medicine.
A strong draught against the flickering screen
of perpetual emails, Zoom meetings.
A prophylactic dose of petrichor,
the earthy floor filling your lungs.

Train your eyes not on the newsfeed, but a
darting wren shapeshifting in the hawthorn,
the hair-like villi on crumbling fungi,
shattered by last night’s summer storm,
and doe-eyed rabbits down the path.

Scroll past oak, ash, beech, and pine.
Swipe your fingertips across the keyboards
of jagged bark encrusted with lichen,
desktop wrist rests replaced by
mossy stumps and soft leaf mulch.

Tune out all notifications.
Turn your ear to the skylark ascending,
her fluttering song pitched high
against the cawing crows
squabbling over carrion.

Photosynthe-SIS
A Green Love Letter to Black Women

Imagine if every tree was a Black woman. To see her glory from root to crown. Just imagine...

Hey Sis. I see you over there. I see you waving to me.
I receive your wave as we share this gentle breeze.

Hey Sis. I see your reach. I see you standing tall.
I lift my head to see your crown. In this space we shall never fall.

Hey Sis. I love your shade and the various colors you present.
I connect with your body and recognize those wrinkles as OUR testament.

Hey Sis. I love how we are rooted in a soil that matches our tribe.
It is nutrient rich, brown and black, and has its own unique vibe.

Hey Sis. I love your subtle movements; smooth like a couple’s dance.
Your very presence gives me the permission to move and take a chance.

Hey Sis. Thank you for the branches that invite me to join.
It is because of your existence that this new phrase is coined...

Tall we are.

Standing side by side

Towards the sun we grow.

With a shine we won’t hide.

A healing presence

For all to see

Some given to you

Some kept for me.

I love you, Sis. May your crown continue to be kissed by the sun.

Tree Speaking

After Poetry for Grenfell workshop (Kamitan Arts)

To this woman here

Trying to capture MY beauty on her mobile

Up here I am full arboreal glory

Rooted under your concrete world

Incessant branches in all directions

Scattering the leaves I have done with 

I’ll make love with the earth and grow more and more 

-but let this lost lady kick them and be childish

if it gives her pleasure to spread my seed 

I am always touched by the kindness of strangers!

Take my fallen branches

Burn in your fire

Dance in the flames of my ghosts

My family is trophy held blossom

Here’s my prize

Try taking from me!

Only I can keep them alive

The short time they bloom

Break them they die -

my white mistresses

Fail to make you happy

In a jar – they shrivel

Yet just stand under me

I can give you my full power

Just meditate – breathe

I am always here

Under my arms

Rest your head in my hollow

Macrocosm of the axilla of a bird’s wing 

I shelter even a small things

... you can almost hear talk in waves ... wind is a reminder life will grow again ... praise the trees ... lungs of our City ... hug our pity 

Deadwood?

I have had it
with forest-bathers,
foragers, and
connectors-with-nature.
What has this wood become?

I am snapped and separated 
in this trampled place
where adolescence dissolves in skunk,
birdsong is smothered by Labradoodle yelps
and the lycra-drone of urban fitness
fades and cracks the shy anemone.

Last spring,
this beech-chapel’s
gentle sanctuary
slowed my thready pulse.
But now the broken copse
pulls my plane-bark scabs.
Underneath, there is bone-pink hardness,
I am so raw that the brush of a fern burns me.
My womb is a hard knot.

Turning to leave,
my last glance gathers in
her boughs
still green and true.
A squirrel scurries at her base and
an airborne liquorice allsort
gently thumps my leg.
An early bumblebee, fuzzy-fresh.

Is it too late
for green alchemy
to soften me?
To drain away
down trickling brook
my hate for human beings,
and send out wind-soft strands of faery silk
to mend my splintered thoughts?

The dogs have quietened now so
I will start
by sitting still,
to meet this tree again,
to meet her,
her squirrel,
and her bee. 

The Survivor Tree

My husband says, “The tree is dying, and besides we never eat the pears”. Behind him, through his workshop window, I see the neat wall of saw blades and imagine how effortlessly the metal would slice through wood. I wince, but it’s true, we never remember and the fruit ends up rotting on the lawn. When we did pass one to our son, he winced at the wormholes. And besides, the tree blocks light to the workshop. Leaning at a 45-degree angle, its branches are stubby and brittle. A friend once told me, in China pear trees symbolise longevity, but Google can overwhelm me with metaphor and myth. Luxuriant moss gathers where the few branches join the narrow trunk. But although it grows on land that technically belongs to us, I feel no sense of possession. 

We moved here seeking a pared-back life on the edge of suburbia. Two months later, red blood and cramps, and she was gone. At dawn, I’d step across the wet grass in slippers and run my fingers across the trunk. I leant softly at first, afraid it was too weak to withstand the pressure. But each morning, trust grew, and I’d put more weight into my hand, feeling the textures of the cracked bark. After a minute together, I’d return indoors, temporarily replenished. 

My husband has returned to digging. “This tree isn’t dying”, I say, “it’s just getting older”. I look up and notice its blossom buds preparing to announce another spring. 

The Fish Tank Mangroves

The fish tank in the pet shop window has no fish. At night, every three minutes, a sign lights up to say “Watch” and a motor behind the rock starts a wave, past a piece of coral to seagrass sprouts and up a little bank to bonsai trees—the splash soaks up in their mini mangrove limbs while the spray lands on their leaves—as they rest and grow out the top of the tank. I watch from outside, until I’m asleep.

Free postcards are in a holder on the window, showing a sun-bleached cross-section of the sea the fish tank represents. “Save the Mangroves,” the postcard back says, and underneath, “Save the Man”.  The pet shop’s been closed for months. The solar panel on the roof keeps the motor going, but not the fish. I watch their bodies disappear.

The animals left months ago, carried in cages, two-by-two, into an air-conditioned van. They’d no room for the fish tank, plumbed into water-pipes they tried to follow, but they connect underground like roots, the surveyor says, even though the pet shop is just a portacabin built on bricks on parking-lot asphalt. And when the light in the pet shop window goes out for good, I follow cracks in the ground along the water-pipe roots to the source of my window world, to real mangroves, real seagrass, real coral and a real deep sea, and the light comes on, and I let the waves watch over me.

WAITING FOR YOU

Days, it’s been weeks of days.
Out for an hour, dare not stay longer,
watch the sky through bare branches.
Back home the door swells and contracts
dries and cracks, ageing still.
I read our table, its rings and knots
pages of life, nature’s full stops
where new growth joined the trunk.  

Days, it’s been weeks of days,
months of my shape changing.
Alone. We are brave.
Leaves unfurl, seed dust birls in the air.
You’re a girl, they say.
I dream of tiny feet,
deep ripples vibrating the room,
child-sized shoes on the wooden floor.

Days, it’s been weeks of days,
months, much waiting for you.
A lush canopy grows in the woods,
filtering a warming sky
where shapes will dance in your eyes under rose confetti.  
And I daydream about me,
who I’ll be, after.
I’ll be the one with the pram in the trees.

Annie Stevens’ Tree of Life

At 3 months old
…one morning in May my parents wheeled me into the Botanic Garden, to the site of their favourite tree. It was a twig of a thing, scarcely big enough to bear the weight of its name: Juniperus rigida. But it was new—we all were—and its scent called my parents to Christmas, to walks in the wild and to the soft forest floors of their courting. They dipped their fingers in dew-laden grass, baptised me in nature’s green temple.

By the time I was 33
…my parents were dead and my first marriage felled. I sought out my tree, only fully knew why when I saw it had changed shape to protect me. Its canopied branches wept like a willow, but unlike the willow that sighs disappointment, my juniper stood steady and strong. A child rounding my belly, my back to the juniper’s trunk, I finally let my tears flow.

At 63
I stop still. 

Juniperus rigida’s evergreen branches have dulled—and in places turned grey or brown. I run a hand through my silver-black hair, my gammy knee twingeing as I walk to the foot of the tree. I bow and my juniper bows back. It seems we’re agreed, so I crouch by its dying roots, dip my fingers in dew-laden grass and, in this most sacred of temples, touch their tips to the head of my grandson.

Trees of Ukraine

The trees of Ukraine line city streets
Leafless watchers
Curtained in dust, cordite clouding
Trunks, outreached limbs
Shells boom
Since that day 

The trees of Ukraine rise
Fearless
Above basements and air-raid shelters
Surprised by invaders 

Some trees in Ukraine are black
Stocky, charred
Limbs amputated, missing
Pointing fingers
Hurt, rootless, dying
Weep
Trails of black tears run down their trunks 

Some trees in Ukraine are mottled white
Pulsating
Life blood
Reaching
Out to people, bloodred sky, buildings
Eye sockets dry and white 

Some trees in Ukraine wear
Camo
Soldier on
Amidst hostilities
Roots gripping tightly into the earth 

Some trees in Ukraine shelter
Teddy bears, toys, burnt-out trucks and cars
Brick, ash, splintered glass
Watching
Sky, defenders, city dwellers
Scurry 

Some trees in Ukraine wait
Hopeful, rail-thin, black and white
Signposts
Of spring, coiled, hibernating
For a people scarred
And proud 

Some trees in Ukraine
in besieged cities
Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Hostomel
Kharkiv, Kherson, Melitopol
Unknown to us before
Are more than just trees
Are life
Hope
Witness
Windows 

Some trees in Ukraine will tell stories
Later
Will heal us
Perhaps
In future
Playing children will give them names
Poke fingers in their scars
Name those who fought
Those who died
Those they saw
Survive 

The trees of Ukraine are leafless shelters
Charred reminders of before
Still alive
Hanging on
Waiting for the silent spring of peace
For the bell to ring in the last round
And blossom pink teardrop petals
For all of us
Remember 

Mama Has Hair of Silver-Green Leaves

“You always do this funny sigh” (my daughter knows me well)
“like you're inhaling the very leaves from every single tree”.
Soul-nurturing osmosis of life-gifting symbiosis,
all-consuming comfort through my entire being.

As I stand here
mothered,
embraced by my kin, breathing
dendrophiliac dopamine,
I begin to root, to belong,
to hear the community
of my elusive ancestry
speak through Earth's melodic song.

Raised rootless
The Tumbleweed Girl,

a waif with mycelium veins
sung sorrowful chords as
mud pies were forged in the rain.
I borrowed her root earth to heal
my incessant umbilical pain.

She offered the nutrition of family. 

Willow psithurism awoken, a world that
made sense beyond splintering
pretence of blood and meaning, my small world
gleaning context of my family tree, peace
reigned through the resplendent aspen canopy.

I am safe, I am nurtured, I am protected, and loved.

There can be no rationale for the intense
silent howling of my peace.
I am home.

Four families
three names
eighteen buildings
so much change
but finally
I
am 
home.

The Summer We Grew Up

The door came with a key, which opened on shady arches, which led to a garden so secret that all of us gasped. In the garden was a fig tree that spat sweetness onto the earth and cats mewled around. Heat slammed in our faces on days when windows didn’t close.

Walls were falling, fruit sun-glowing. There was no outside; just noise from lives overlooking; pots and pans thwacking, bones cracking on terrible mornings, love, then siesta silence.

When the heat got hottest we downed water like stray dogs and felt the difference. We lost the grime of the streets. There were scratches on inner arms, flesh torn and bloody; fighting fit; lifting bundles and brambles; squirting citrus; Adam’s apples gulping.

Sometimes Jo sang lyrical beauty from back streets; it seemed just right. We longed for our best girls, dancing in beach bars but we were growing; sweating our August away; making room in our pockets for cash; too tired at the day’s end for roaming.

When it was finished and everything done, it was missing only a fountain to whoosh it to life. It was green, oh so perfect behind that sturdy old door; if I say we felt bad as we locked it behind us, it’s because it was the only peace we’d ever known.

A Jagged Hug

We didn’t hug trees.

We climbed them after errant younger pupils,

Trying to escape chiding

By hiding in a jagged hug of branches.

We didn’t revere trees,

We chopped them for fuel amidst holiday gales,

Lugging awkward logs

Into bog-soot blackened cradles.

We didn’t venerate trees.

We gifted them handholds and scuff marks,

Catchings of cloth and skin

From chin scrapes and joy-filled games.

We didn’t worship trees.

We sheltered under their leaves,

Watching a rain-soaked match

Before batch drying our tired team.

We didn’t rag-tie trees.

We whispered our secrets instead,

Telling our gossip and pouring tales

Onto rails of foot-entangling roots.

We didn’t honour trees.

We pulled them into our daily skirmishes,

Roping them with our lives, ribbons and light

Under bright city banners, we planted them in reality.

We didn’t award trees.

We dragged them through our every-days,

Scraping their splinters, breathing their calm

Beyond balm, until our bark-backed souls could rest.

The Norwegian Spruce Seeds of the Svalbard Vault

I’m saving you from extinction, the seed of you for the future, hidden in this seed bank, that in time the earth may once more allow to grow. Maize and rice and wheat are all dead, but the seeds we’ve saved in this vault may be planted to feed and comfort a new mother for you, and in her you may grow, under the shade of a Norwegian spruce.

I’m your mother for now, though you’re nothing but an embryo, cells from your father and I, that I’ve frozen in time, vitrified to protect you, yes, I’ve turned you into glass, flash-frozen with liquid-nitrogen, so ice crystals can’t damage you like my hostile body, but bodies like cities fall and glass breaks and permafrost melts and you’ll no longer be preserved and no new mother will find you and bring you to life, so you’ll not exist, not be part of the regeneration of the earth, when soil is once more fertile, ready for the seed, and like the avocado, cacao and mango you may be recalcitrant, and like them you may never see the sky again, but the seeds of the Norwegian spruce will wait until the vault cracks open and will take root without the need for you or me, and without us, the earth may heal once more.

But for now you are my tiny hope, frozen with the Norwegian spruce seeds of the Svalbard Vault, for now you are our future, for now you are mine.

The Hawthorn and The Heart 

It is wild garlic time again

A time ephemeral that moves like Easter Sunday

A little earlier if the frost is brief

If the spring is damp

If the light is bright

We come to the first baby-hand leaves of the season

Tight balled fists

Chlorophyll-green

We infuse them in hot water

We drink them and they flush the winter from our bodies

Usher in the spring

Culpeper writes

Take hawthorn: to tend a broken heart

To open it once more 

We pull handfuls of wild garlic

Fat flat ribbons

Select three-cornered leek with delicate fingers

One here, one there

Something in my ancient mind knows the alliums

Knows the smell and knows it to be telling the truth 

We carry home our treasures

Chop the wild garlic fine

Toast sunflower seeds

Drizzle olive oil 

And stir the verdant pesto into bowls of pasta

<>

It is true I hold the date you died in mind

I know

Where it sits in a calendar grid

Where it lies in relation to your birthday, and to mine

And where it nestles close to your wedding anniversary 

But it is more true that you deteriorated during wild garlic time

Grew thin as the wild cherries bloomed

And died when the hawthorn blossomed

<>

Last year I gathered armfuls of the flowers

Filled vases in my room

And the sorry smell of hawthorn told my heart

Open wide

Spring is here 

Sleeping Beauty of Threadneedle Street

Dawn finally woke, sunlight kissing her cheek through a hole in the tent. Her phone was dead.

Her back ached and her mouth was dry. Her finger throbbed where she’d stabbed herself at that darning workshop. Not much of a birthday.

She decided to leave the protest today, she needed her comfortable bed and proper antiseptic cream. She lay in her sleeping bag a few moments longer, enjoying the birdsong and wondering what time it was â€“ there were no voices, no whistles or drumming. Eventually her bladder forced her up.

Outside, she couldn’t immediately work out where she was.

Instead of the jumble of grubby nylon domes and wall of police vans defending the Bank of England, Cornhill had sprouted a forest.

Fireweed and buddleia grew next to bramble and sycamore. Peeling ropes of Old Man’s Beard spiraled up the traffic lights. Where the tarmac had split, moss soothed its edges.

Fox paths snaked away from the steps to Bank station. Pigeons clattered noisily between branches.

Dawn looked for a tree to pee behind. Squatting, she focused on the ground in front of her. Leaf litter and empty snail shells piled up against the kerb.

She shook her bum and stood, retying her belt. Tiny insects ran up and down the miniature canyons in the tree trunk. Waist-high, the bark flowed over lichen-covered railings like slow-motion lava, imperceptibly absorbing them.

Dawn twisted dandelions and ivy into a crown, as red kites circled high above the treetops.

Pollard Sprouts 

These cutbacks

Notwithstanding, 

Here’s hoping:

     I’ve just twigged 

At your participles

A gentling,

           extending, it’s a graving in sky 

&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;žąłŮ’s&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

               Not over yet;

Yeswithstanding 

Wintry dearth

And summer’s rot, 

no shame to

come back weaker

           If you come back

                      All the same.

Alder

After the years of strife and to make amends before her daughter went away, the mother made her a shield of alder, the wood as hard as iron.
But her daughter never used it.

She sewed her daughter a dress with cloth dyed brown from alder twigs, red from alder bark, green from its flowers.
But her daughter never wore it.

She took out the pith from a green alder shoot and made a whistle for her daughter.
But her daughter hardly called.

The years passed; the mother fell ill.
And then the daughter returned. She made tea with alder essence,
but her mother managed only a few sips.

She built a fire with alder logs that burned bright and fiercely.
But her mother stayed cold.

She whittled a goddess figure from alder wood and placed it on her mother’s pillow for the healing.
But it was too late.

That spring, after her mother had gone, the daughter went down to the boggy land where the alders grew. She gathered catkins to make a black dye for her clothes, fashioned another whistle from the alder’s new green shoots. And when she called—one long sorrowful note, full of the love she’d stored up but never voiced—the wind picked up and the alders sighed.

Apple Jack’s Wassail

When dewdrops jewel grass blades with riotous rainbows,
When hedgehogs awaken, daffodils dance and blow,
When the apple bears blossom and bees fill the trees,
Then you’ll go a-roaming to find your heart’s ease.

You may wander through meadows,
You may amble by streams,
But you’ll find me in the orchard
As the stalk of your dreams.

When the sun coaxes fair arms to blush at its sight,
When roses pink hedgerows and fledglings take flight,
When the apple buds spurt, their girths growing round,
Then you’ll go a-roaming over hardened, ridged ground.

You may wander through meadows,
You may amble by streams,
But you’ll find me in the orchard,
Ripening flesh of your dreams.

When breezes tease old leaves and toss them afloat,
When apples are bobbed or don toffee coats,
When millstones grind and presses squash fruit,
Then you’ll go a-roaming to muddy your boots.

You may squander in meadows,
You may dawdle by streams,
But you’ll find me in the orchard
At the core of your dreams.

When the icy north wind wails a ghostly drumbeat,
Leave the applewood fire, its sweet-smelling heat,
Chase a robin through the blizzard to find the last fruit,
Raise your wassailing cider to toast apple tree roots.

You may tramp snow-filled meadows,
You may skate frozen streams,
But you’ll find me in the orchard,
The very pip of your dreams.

Each and Every April

Mrs. Ozeki’s favourite tree finally came into focus. An explosion of pink, the weeping cherry blossom’s flowers fell in wisps like candy floss. Beneath its branches lay a little bench, which she ambled towards and then came down to rest upon.

Exhaling deeply, she unwrapped two rice balls and placed them beside herself. One for her, the other for her husband, Kaito.

“Do you remember him?” Mrs. Ozeki said aloud, her eyes fixed forward on the picnicking families. “No, I’m sure you do.”

Mrs. Ozeki picked up one rice ball and pushed the other to the empty side of the bench.

“You can have it,” she said, looking back towards the tree. “Not like he can come and collect it anymore…”

The tree’s branches blew gently in the breeze, tickling the back of her neck as Kaito once would. A few of its petals shook loose, landing on the unclaimed rice ball in the process.

Mrs. Ozeki smiled to herself, her fingers caressing the blossoms fondly. Then her eyes fell upon the tree’s trunk, which had only grown thicker with time. She, meanwhile, had worn away – thinner than washi paper – purple hues spreading out like inkblots beneath her skin.

“I’m glad you haven’t forgotten us just yet,” she whispered. “You made our first date with these branches – the privacy you provided us was much appreciated!”

A sudden gust sent a shower of blossoms over Mrs. Ozeki, bathing her in a youthful pink hue.

“I’m always young again around you!”

 What To Do If A Tree Falls On My House

Evacuate

Zeus, the God of thunder and lightning and rain and wind and war, wallops the scarlet oak, grizzled old-man-bark groaning. Amputated blood-branches and split-lobed foliage crackle
through the roof. I don’t want to leave the sacred tree, as you try to remove me, swallow me whole.

Call 999

You poke digits into your mobile, reminiscent of early seedlings nudging through soil. Magic emergency number to make everything better. Yet, it won’t bring back the resident chocolate-buff Treecreeper scoffing spiders, the Great Spotted Woodpecker’s high hammering, the miner bees, the bracket fungi. 

Contact the insurance company

You say the riven oak can’t be saved, but the insurance will cover costs for its disposal. Before performing sacrificial rites, I want assurance that tomorrow Laura will swing on the blossoming bough, Luke will rescue the hesitant tabby tremble-clinging to a branch, Granny’s ghost will still rest on the bench knitted out of tumbled timber from the Great Storm of 1987. 

Call 24-hour tree removal company

You ring the crisis tree service to be rid of the problem. But like the resilient oak, I won’t be uprooted. I wound-heal residual sawn-bone under bark skin, salvage scarred lumber. I know who I am with the timeworn oak. I know every acorn. Every taproot. Every sapling. Every season. Greek gods can never die. And as Zeus controls the movement of the stars in the sky, I plant acorns to rekindle the life cycle of the oak.