Nature Notes
This is a book. Look child, this is a tree. See honeyed chocolate wood, smooth flowing through trunk and branches, a candelabra wearing a hair snood of mint green leaves, each taken from the master leaf in the artist's eye. Trunk, branch and leaf; brown and green, the untruth by which all trees are known. This too is a book. A guide to the truth of trees as found in the British Isles. Each page proclaims: I am born of wood, out of tree, my history bleached white, made ready for the lie of a likeness of my kin. From this taxonomy of fine indian ink line, loose leaf bound with words, circumnavigated by averages of height and breadth a name can be conjured, no more substantial than the rustle of paper. Listen. Here is oak. Here is yew. Ash, willow, beech and birch. They are but whispers, no more solid than psalms at vespers. Here is truth. You must forget all you know, or believe to be true. I am tree. Forever upstretched to pray, sway and pray, unceasing without rest, a wind song to heaven. Feet corralled at birth, earth cosseted; rooted to time, to the pin prick of my death, a whole life bound to contemplation, the solitude of a monk. I am tree. I travel time, enduring. I see the sun rise, I see the sun set. The seasons which mould my heart come and go. I have seen your fleetness of foot, the quickness of spirit flaring full of importance, looking to make a mark, but you are like the breeze skipping over the world. You are here and then you are gone; a sometime sparkle of light. I am tree Come stand with me. Be still, reach your arms round, anchor your fingers, let my corrugations scent your fingerprints. Come closer, trunk to trunk. Turn your head, lay your cheek like a lover against my body, close your eyes, tune the antennae of your palms ready to receive communion. I will offer you the weight of my history, the measure of my spirit, the song of the earth which runs through my core. I will sing to your heart a hymn like no other. Then you will know me. I am tree. ©Malcolm Cooke 2020
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