Three Chestnut Tree Poems

Not far from where I live is a huge mature chestnut tree. These three poems were written independently but I thought they worked well gathered together. In "Utterly Stark..." it may be worth noting the internal rhyme in line 6 which chimes with the rhymes at the end of lines 5 and 6. This applies in each stanza. In the second stanza there are also serendipitous rhymes in lines 2 and 4 which rhyme with those in lines 5 and 6. In "The Chestnut Tree Now..." there is an internal rhyme in line 3 of each stanza. "Jigwarra" is a nonce word developed from Porthgwarra, a tiny cove at the far south-western tip of West Cornwall and a place visitors fall in love with not knowing what it's like to live there when the weather (frequently!) turns bad.

   An earlier poem to take a close look at a tree is "The Sycamore Tree," written in December 2014, posted on 28 January 2019 and linked here. And another earlier poem, this time taking a look at a single bough, is "A Fallen Bough," written in November 2013, posted on 6 June 2016 and linked here.

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1. "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree"

Under the spreading chestnut tree
   With leaves gone autumn-brown,
The fallen chestnuts mush the ground,
   The year swaps smile for frown.

I swept my mind through days of old,
   Their jaunts and jibs now gone,
But all I found were shrivelled hopes
   And promises not done.

(What yellows, reds, what sickly pales,
   Have smutched the chestnut’s leaves,
They zig-zag-fall from branch to earth
   Like splotches brushed from sleeves.)

Always this lust to stew in self,
   That sly-glanced foul “I will!”
Neighbour or loved one, both are blanked
   That appetite might swill.

(Fissured and knolled, a scaly-grey,
   The tree’s trunk sags with age,
Its baring branches jag the sky,
   Stiff with an old man’s rage.)

Who tells? Can there be settlement
   Of years and self’s excess?
For truth, these hates and lusts still burn,
   Aching for cheap success.

And like the spreading chestnut tree
   One day I’ll rot and fall,
Then rain’s caress and earth’s warm loam
   Will soothe its final sprawl;
But I, driven and wraithed, will flail
   In the wind’s caterwaul.

(October 2024)

2. "Utterly Stark Is the Chestnut Tree"

Utterly stark is the chestnut tree
   As January frosts flash white,
And crazed as a sheet of splintered ice
   Its branches clutch the light;
For dank is the day and dark is the night
When none might dream or beg respite,
   And snow slumped in its lee
   Writhes in the wind like lice.

Its trunk now bent like a crook’d knee
   And grained as a gaffer’s hand,
Is froze half-sided with brittle frost
   And by the weather tanned.
What hope or dream that’s summer-bland
Can live when fanned by winter’s wand?
   Yet soon hunched buds will spree,
   Shrugging off cold’s accost.

(January 2025)

3, "The Chestnut Tree Now Full Awake"

Halloo, the sun! The year’s first warmth
   Syrups the vale in balm;
The Misses Deans, just in their teens,
   Cackle and squabble long;
      The year’s in its youth,
      There’s haze on the heath,
The ’chaffs and the tits are trebling their song;
What a shout of laughter comes from the farm:
   Sing jigwarra, jigwarra, jig!

The chestnut tree now full awake
   Has splurt its luscious buds;
Those toffeed blobs like juice-dipt cobs
   Glisten in brown and red;
      And soon they’ll peak
      In a fleshy spike
Peeling to leaves as wide as a bed,
Wrestling with the wind in its floods and scuds:
   Sing jigwarra, jigwarra, jig!

Around its bole that’s hide-like tough
   Landfolk soak sun and chat,
The Misses Deans in farmyard jeans
   Fling off a giggling jive;
      Throw a fig at death
      With its winter’s cough,
For branch-lichen bubbles, green as chive,
And Spring’s in the fields, hurrahing its hat:
   Sing jigwarra, jigwarra, jig!

(April 2025)

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© October 2024 - April 2025