The Saturday poem: The Elms

By Alison Brackenbury

We may know the trees but rarely wood.
Elm was the workhorse, daily tree,
pale handle, for your fork and spade,
a chair as low as a bent knee
cut down for each uneven floor.
Women leaned into its curved back
as the milk pulsed, as birds once pressed
its crowded leaf, before storm's black.

The elms died fast, of one disease.
Is that a sapling, in the hedge?
No, hazel with its rose-flushed buds
then young lime with its heart-shaped edge.
Its step-grandchild must be the ash,
sprung on street corners, on stone hills,
until the lightning cracks the wind,
the crest is split, the fine twig spills.