When the Tree Men are Gone…

By Stuart McFarlane

 THE FIRST DAYS OF SPRING 

The last, forlorn days of winter;
still do they stubbornly cling.
Idle thoughts turn to graveyards.
I hear a mournful bell ring.
Yet there stirs an awakening.
I see a bluebird take wing.
Violets bloom, and daffodils.
I resist an urge to sing.
My thoughts now turn to sunlight;
to the new life it will bring.
Farewell, the last days of winter.
Behold! The first days of spring.




           THE TREE MEN
           
               I

Walking through the park,
this winter morning,
I saw how the Council's been at the trees.
Some men, in heavy, black jackets, were throwing
branches in the back of a truck.
One was still sawing hard,
finishing the job.
The branch rolled onto the grass.
The man wiped his brow with his leather glove.
 
                    II

They said the trees blocked the view;
of what, exactly, it was hard to see.
But trees, I suppose, you can't talk to;
or urge to have smaller families.
You just take an axe to them.


                    III

All along the avenue there are now
trees marked with yellow paint.
These are the next for hacking;
and those, already cut, stand stark
against the winter sky;
their severed limbs now stacked
in the back of council trucks.
And, now, I wonder if,
when the tree men are gone,
maybe in the quiet of night,
these mutilated stumps will still feel
a spark crackle along a tattered nerve-way;
that savage lunge, as a sharp blade
splits the skin.

Stuart McFarlane is now semi-retired. He taught English for many years to asylum seekers in London. He has had poems published in a few online journals.                                                                                                                    

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