Green Were the Good Days

Green Were the Good Days

When I was a supple young comrade of the forest, I drew sustenance from the earth. My rings multiplied, and I grew strong and splendid beneath a blanket of thick, ruckled bark.

I siphoned nourishment meant for the limber pine sentries around me, leaving them brittle and stunted. I stood mighty, the greatest among them, resented by those who bent beneath my formidable span.

Years passed. I housed ecosystems, bore shoals of flowers and cupped fruits, and watched my offspring emerge, though I never allowed them to reach the bright skies I claimed for myself. I was the majesty of the forest: dominant, ancient, unquestioned.

Then men came.

They hung wicked souls from the heft of my boughs. Ropes creaked in the shifting air. Their deaths blackened my virgin cells and dampened my appetite for life.

Seasons continued their endless procession. Winters split my bark with cold, and summers baked sap viscous beneath my skin. Mushrooms clustered upon me, pale parasites feeding upon a king too stubborn to fall. Woodborer beetles tunnelled through my ancient flesh, and owls nested in my hollows.

Moss crawled across my northern face in thick green sheets, drinking from the damp trapped within my cracks. Foxes denned between my roots in the cruellest winters; insects hatched beneath my bark in vast, unseen broods. I towered above the forest floor and remained untouchable.

Now I welcome the small trespasses of creatures that neither fear nor worship me. Their brief lives flicker against my stillness like sparks from a dying fire.

Children wander near, daring one another to touch the hanging tree before fleeing in shrieking packs. They speak of curses and ghosts and wicked men whose shadows still sway from my limbs at dusk. None understand the sentence began long before those men ever swung from this wood.

With age came the cruel clarity of consequence. To endure became its own burden. What I stole from others to guarantee my longevity has left death always out of reach.

Strip a ring of bark from the circumference of a tree, and it will wither and perish. How I long for such release. I silently beg the deer and rabbits to do me this service, but none gnaw deeply enough to free me. Countless axes pass beneath my canopy, yet the blades favour weaker, gentler pine.

Here I must stand, a victim of my own making.

The End