I was young when the long ships came. Their hulls cut the grey sea, and their oars beat time like rain.
Men shouted, burned, prayed to gods whose names are now wind, Thor, Odin and Freya.
I did not care.
I thickened my bark.
I was taller still when Norman stone rose and fell.
I was broad when Cromwell’s soldiers passed with iron and psalm and smoke.
I was an adult when when roads were cut, when engines began to hum where once there had been only hooves.
I did not care.
Humans flickered.
They buzzed about my roots in their brief brightness, lived entire lives between one ring of my growth and the next.
They loved, fought, built, wept. Then they were gone, but I remained.
I drank rain.
I held soil.
I fed squirrel and badger and beetle.
That was enough.
When the Close was marked out in white paint and argument, they spared me.
They built their brick and hedges in a circle around my shadow.
They gave the street my name.
I did not ask for it.
…. but now my heartwood softens.
Deep within me there is lace where once there was iron hard wood.
Storms no longer test me, they warn me.
The sap rises thinly this year.
I know.
Not with fear.
With wood-knowledge.
So, I draw what strength remains.
I gather sun from the last warm days of autumn.
I pull water from soil that has known my roots for a thousand years.
So I pull what energy I have left and I make three …. Three acorns, low on a bending branch.
Heavy. Certain. Complete.
My last act is not defiance.
It is continuation.
She comes at dusk.
The Morrigan, in her quiet aspect , not war-cry but keening wind. Banshee-soft.
She places her palm against my gnarled trunk.
“Old one,” she whispers.
Her voice is not sound alone for i hear it clearly. It is river and battlefield and cradlesong.
My leaves shiver. A curl passes through them like a final breath.
“You stood,” she says. “That is enough.”
The three acorns loosen and fall. not to earth, into her waiting hands.
She smiles.
Beside her appears Dian Cécht, healer of gods, gardener and keeper of silver tools.
From his satchel he takes a small trowel, bright as a sliver of moon.
Ten feet to the west, he kneels.
The soil parts easily and he plants the first acorn and presses the earth gently closed.
To the east, he does the same.
He pours water carefully from a flask, as though baptising the new life held within.
The third he brings to me.
He finds a crevice in my ancient bark, a hollow where beetles have wintered and moss has made its soft home. He presses the acorn into it and murmurs,
“You fed squirrel and badger for a thousand years.
Let this be your last gift to the small, fragile creatures who depended on you when winters were hard.”
I feel it settle within me.
I am content.
Then they come.
One by one, doors open along Nether Oak Close.
Carol and Sandy, Michael, the Patels, all of the humans who saw me everyday.
The childern who leaned against my trunk to read their books.
The old man who never waves but always looks.
The couple who once argued and learned to stay.
They do not know why they walk.
But they recognise the calling.
They gather on the green and, without instruction, form a ring around me.
Hands meet hands.
Silence settles.
For the first time in a thousand years, I notice them fully.
Not as flicker.
Not as noise.
But as warmth.
Deep in my failing heartwood, I am thankful.
The sap slows.
The pull toward earth grows stronger than the pull toward sky.
The Morrígan and Dian Cécht press their palms to my trunk.
“Rest,” she says.
I do.
The people break their circle.
One by one they approach.
A hand against bark.
A forehead bowed.
“Thank you.”
Some add, “Goodbye.”
The sun slips low, painting brick and branch gold.
Humans and gods depart without spectacle.
Night comes gently.
And I fall inward , not with crash, but with release as the sun sets for me one last time.
Morning.
Sunlight warms the soil west of where I stood.
A green shoot presses upward.
To the east, another answers.
Two small shoots unfold into the light and greet the sun as I once did.
And will.
For a thousand years more in Nether Oak Close