Friday Fiction: Heartwood

Protect our trees

Jackie Morris’ beautiful spiral has been stamped onto plywood to make charms and medallions, some of which now hang on threatened street trees.

Here’s a Friday Fiction post. Thank you to my lovely paying subscribers who make some of the posts open to all, as with this one. Please consider subscribing if you’d like to support my work!

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“Originally written for the people of Sheffield, during their battle to save more than 17,000 trees from felling in the city, Heartwood is free to use, anywhere in the world, without any need to seek permission or give credit, for anyone defending trees, woods or forests from unjust felling. Feel free to post it, set it to music, sing it, share it, read it aloud, turn it into charms against harm...” writes the poem’s author, Robert Macfarlane.

Information on the shame of Sheffield and the killing of trees.

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Heartwood

Would you hew me

to the heartwood, cutter?

Would you leave me open-hearted?

Put an ear to my bark, cutter,

hear my sap's mutter,

mark my heartwood's beat, my leaves' flutter.

Would you turn me to timber, cutter?

Leave me nothing but a heap of logs, a pile of brash?

I am a world, cutter,

I am a maker of life —

drinker of rain, breaker of rocks,

caster of shade, eater of sun,

I am time-keeper,

breath-giver,

deep-thinker, cutter,

I am a city of butterflies, a country of creatures.

But my world takes years to grow,

cutter, and seconds to crash;

your saw can fell me, your axe can bring me low.

Do you hear these words I utter? I ask this of you —

have you heartwood, cutter?

Have those who sent you?

© Robert Macfarlane, 2018

This linocut art is by Nick Hays, and is free to use