In so few strides I circumambulate the tree, its centuries
centred in rings of heartwood, sapwood – the circularity
of years, charted seasons, bud & leaf-fall, bloom & icicle

Myth in its fibres, wood made word; the fissured bark
of Yggdrasil, world-tree, tree of Ask – the first man, tree
of manna, foe feller, child healer, known by eye & fingertip

Here, see the fine and delicate strata of its leaves, how they gift
sun’s light one to another, on and on down through themselves,
filter & diffuse it, release of form & structure, release as gesture

*

Chalara, the trees’ killer, gets to work in summer:
spore to leaf, hypha to stoma, appressorium splits
the epidermis, fungus threads the pith, xylem & phloem

In months leaves wither, stems drop, branches purple, suffer
lesions. Crown slides low, turns winter-brittle off season.
Disease strips whole hills of trees, makes place memory

I cannot know the tragedy of moths & lichens, their soft
dusty bodies, their searching mouths, their ecosystem
syphoned out of other, larger, ecosystems, last generations

of their species. I only know how names on maps – Askrigg,
Askham, Ashford – will slip their meaning, trip the tongue,
the way word follows world, & how forest light will alter

CHRIS POUNDWHITE is a poet concerned with ecology, climate, and the human relationship to land and the non-human. His poems have appeared in a number of journals and magazines, including the Reliquiae supplement, Longshore Drift, and Otata. He teaches ecopoetry courses & workshops through Go to the Pine, and works on poetry commissions that fall within his spheres of interest. Chris also co-curates SALT, an annual festival of place & environment based in Folkestone, Kent.

Ash Tree was commissioned by The Ash Project as part of The Ash Archive