Plague-Tree

by ben blyth

That tree must be in its thirties

I quip to no-one

on an afternoon walk

with no dog

sundered by lightening

its strewn-skin shattered

amongst the cow-shit and trod-straw

of the top-field

legend has it this

was a plague-village once

now, all that remains are the

barrows and ditches and

hedges and holloways that

carried the cries of the

forgotten dead

cross the half-hearted electric fence

and seed-fat pigeons caress

vertical scars

reminders from a time

when the living sap was boiled

to five-times the heat of the sun

drinking on a school night, again

below the surface

the charred roots linger

fossil hollows of a life

gouged in dirt

for my thirteenth birthday

my parents stage an “archaeological dig”

in the back garden

The games are:

1. Who can dig the deepest hole?

2. Who can clear the widest patch of earth?

3. Who can find the most exciting thing?

I’m not interested in 2. or 3

I want to dig the deepest until

I either bury myself or

reach somewhere else.

we work with the indignant industry of teenagers

motivated not by pension schemes

or the promise of flexible hours

but by sausages

unearthing shards of knapped flint

could they be arrowheads?

and fractured stems of clay pipes

mementos of a seventeenth-century fag-break

when this place

was at war with itself

After the strike-

three summers past-

the heart burned

until the rains came in

from the west.

After the dig-

twenty-four summers past-

a new herbaceous border has appeared

in the widest trench

and in my deepest hole –

a maple tree.

After the plague-

six hundred and seventy summers past-

and a perspex sign, erected by

The Lincolnshire Limewoods Project

proudly announces

this tradition is bullshit.

The village was abandoned in the 1600s

–it says–

because no-body lived there

who was any good

at anything

anymore.

nullus rector * nullus domus * nullus fundus

One final look and atop the ruin—

green shoots!

After the hollowing

the plague-tree

made a child

of itself.