THE OAKS' GRAVEYARD

The Oaks’ Graveyard.

The oaks are dead.

Straying from the road,

I stumbled on their secret graveyard,

enclosed within a stand of living trees

where their remains now rest –

eighteen in all and once of mighty size,

but now just severed and uprooted stumps,

hidden from the common sight within a roadside copse.

This stand of trees was once a greater wood,

where, no doubt, oaks grew strong and tall.

(Not far away, the last of these still lives –

its massive, hollow shell

now standing like a spectre

beside the old lane’s edge.)

I’ve passed here many times before

but never guessed that in this shady place

these precious relics,

each like a wooden Ozymandias, lay:

cut down, uprooted, left to rot,

and overshadowed by tall-growing ash and birch.

Some upright, others on their sides,

each forms its own memorial

but all without a name or date recording their demise.

And overhead, the reverend rooks

in well-worn Sunday black

preach from sky-roofed pulpits,

chanting never-ending funeral rites

or delivering grim sermons

on death’s inevitable grip,

while a woodpecker

is hammering in coffin nails.

Across the sky, a red kite haunts the fields,

uttering its strident, plaintive cries,

not mithering for the oaks  

but in mocking tones bemoaning

the death inflicted

by its own beak and claws.