Tag: community poem

Trees Join Earth and Sky   Mandy Ross

 

Here are tree memories from many different audience members at the Return to Nature Festival. Tree memories turned in a poignant, heartwarming, beautiful collective poem. We celebrate trees, we celebrate words, we celebrate with each other! 

Collective poem, Return to Nature Festival, Holders Woods, 14 Sept 2019

 

Trees and woods join earth and sky.
Remember a tree? Tell us where? And why?

We ran down the hill, faster and faster,
but we knew which trees would stop us falling.

The tree in our grandparents’ garden
had a bench round the trunk for summer picnics.

We planted a tree to remember my baby sister, Freya.
Now every time we go to my dad’s boxing club, we water it.

Lost trees: a mature oak with her daughters surrounding her,
at the top of Shirley Park. Now all gone, victims of ‘progress.’

Nana’s apple tree, a worm in every apple.

Maybe Grandad will make cider.

Every year we roast chestnuts from the chestnut tree,
eat them hot, share them with our neighbours.

Planting baby trees in a snowy park
to remember our friend Jo, much missed.

Watching the cricket with Dad, under the shade
of the spreading horse chestnut in Kings Heath Park.

Oak after beautiful oak on Offa’s Dyke.The grace and ruggedness of trees,
solid, majestic and beautiful. Always inspired…

In Swedish myth, an ash, Yggdrasil is ‘the tree of the world’,
holding up the whole universe. Though most trees in Sweden are conifers.

An oak tree in the playground.
We climbed it to get away from the caretaker, who chased us.

A huge lychee tree long ago in our garden in Goa. The seed came from Macao.
It never gave us lychees, but all my cousins remember climbing it.

I had a Christmas tree as a kid. It moved house with us twice.

Ann remembers a den inside a willow tree, the scent of mock orange floating over.

Fraser hugs a tree in Moseley Bog. Too big to reach all the way around.
Jasmine runs round her apple tree twenty times to help the apples grow.

A wonderful beech tree near our house,
constantly changing, magnificent, home to many birds.
My mother lies beneath a beautiful carob tree. My father visited her there often.
‘I couldn’t have found a better place,’ he said.

Trees and woods join us to each other, and earth and sky.
Remember a tree? Tell us where? And why?