Living On Three Continents: Trees
Susan Siddeley writes of the day when four men showed up, insisting that they had to cut down some trees.
“We’ve come to cut the trees!”
“What? Oh No! Please.”
They’ve just been ear-marked, for a park.
You’ve got to do it…Right-of-way.
Is that what you’re trying to say?
It’s the power line…you have to keep clear.
Yes! Yes! I hear. I hear.
How will you do it, with a saw?”
And they look at me, all four and hedge. . .
“With an axe? An axe, but they’re not firewood,
But they could be posts. Use a saw, p-leas-e
On my trees.”
“Your saw was robbed! Look I won’t be mobbed:
four of you ,and it was robbed, last week,
whilst you ate lunch?
I have a hunch . . . you’re pulling my leg!
All right beg! Yes, beg! I have a saw and I will lend it,
but the treeline - you must bend it!
Cut the least and cut them straight.
I don’t care if you’re here ‘til late.
But please go easy on the trees.”
I watch the foreman watch the two,
who watch the man who wields the saw for…
they are four. The saw is only one.
They’re done, at last, and I face the space, bereft,
one man, one saw has left…
“OK,” says Number One. “That’s it. Cheer up!”
In the clearing where the trees lie dead.
It’s like he said, there’s hope for the slope.
Maybe it could harbour something else -
grass or games or swings.
Strings!
We have to pull some strings
or they’ll be back, to hack the trees
and ‘please’ might not work next time.
He told me so did Number One.
He sympathised.
But his job was to ‘top’ and tend the pylons’ path.
And wrath like mine, well I could opine,
but the four of them with saw patrolled.
It was their work. It could be worse. He’d cut the least.
Most’s swathe is more and most is law.
I wave them off and survey the tumbled trees,
picking absentmindedly at saw teeth, chip-clogged.
Was it borrowed or lent the saw which logged and rent?
Now spent until the next time…
