A seed grew into
the spirit of a country
nurtured on the wall between
two lands
perhaps the reincarnation of a Roman guard?
Or a stonemason who worked on the Emperor Hadrian’s wall,
dreaming of his Apuane home
where his wife and children farm Tuscan soil,
nurturing their little vineyard of hope until the return of their patriarch.
The return…
Does anything cut from this world return?
Some things remain alive in memory.
Their presence felt, like the itch of a severed limb,
the soothing voice of your mother’s spirit in the song of a morning lark.
Yet, the void is real.
There is no filling it.
Where there was something true, something distinct and beloved,
there is now only air and occasional blue sky, chasing or fleeing the darkness.
“Everything is pointless.”
Shouted something inside someone with a chainsaw and a grudge.
But the roots and the stone and the grassy fen deny this cleft
and prove, that some things do regrow.
Some truths outlast the hateful urge
to destroy their nature
and gather stalwart in the emptiness,
refusing to leave us bereft.
Anyone with a soul will feel the senseless loss of this tree. The study of theology from such intellectual giants as CS Lewis, conclude that all acts of ‘evil’ are carried out with some kind of rationale — though this rationale maybe warped and despicable, they nonetheless do stand as some kind of motivation.
I’m not sure I go along with this philosophy. These days, there are just too many ‘events’ that defy any kind of logic — warped, evil, fundamentalist, or anarchistic.
The fact that this is happening at a time in the UK when so many young lives are being lost by an epidemic of knife crime, is no coincidence.
Things are falling apart, not just here but across the globe. This various attributed quotation is today more poignant than ever:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
We all need to do something. Write to your MP, march for justice when you can. Write and converse with your friends and wider community. Pray, if you are religious/spiritual. Anything positive is better than nothing. ❤
