The British oak may fill my head with images of sturdy reliability,

the sheer strength of will and powerful  robustness

to ever bow to the pressure of a thousand muscular gales

or the clambering and kicking of a million children’s feet

as they laugh and swing off branches replete with green lush leaves;

is one that I try to emulate in my soul,

but I know I am more like my innocent favourite

that of the sprawling, myopic, maudlin, mysterious and disapproving

Willow tree.

 

I fell for the drooping wonder

more than any other down to chance,

the fact that it was the most resplendent and eye-catching

of all surrounding Moor Green School.

It sat dumpy but with an element of half hidden pride

as it greeted us all throughout the year and it shrouded

a secret melancholy underneath its bowed head

and string like green hula hoop skirt.

It was the morning glory before the suffering began.

 

There were half starved trees everywhere, surrounded by bushes

and all designed to take the sting out of the daily lesson.

Behind the wire like fences that circulated the playground,

standing guard like a Gestapo officer smoking a stolen cigarette

and taking mental notes of who to incriminate next or who to blame

for his wife’s fondness for the Jewish girl who shared her lipstick,

was the dense like creatures of gnarled, twisted diseased

bark of trees that hid black angry bulbous spiders,

with seven legs, maimed by the cruelty of children.

 

It was not until my final days in Moor Green that I finally saw underneath

the volumous green skirt and fell silent at the wonder within.

The football squad, dressed in black and green stripped shirts,

feeling at odds because we resembled no other team,

what ten year old didn’t want to at least wear the colour of a hero,

Peter Barnes Blue, Steve Heighway red, Gary Shaw dripping claret,

I kicked a ball by accident, determined to understand my tired friend.

I crept under the shield and spied melancholic beauty

and she whispered her love to me.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015.