Branching out

Trees are wonderful, so much the jewels of English scenery. The past few days in Iceland has reminded me how much I miss trees when they are absent from a landscape.

They stand proudly erect across decades, even centuries, as silent observers of the passing kaleidoscope of human activity. What tales they could tell if only they could speak. We live close to National Trust woodland, and the density of trees is like an energising green lung on the outer edge of London.

This tree stands prominently on local common land, and it had become rather unkempt. So it has just been shorn of its untidy mass of lower branches and looks a good deal better for it. There is a perky look to it that I now enjoy seeing each time I pass.

"Trees" (1913)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer