Old Oaks

Leaf 234 – Looking Back

 

S.R. Badmin - Oak (Ladybird Book of Trees, 1963)

There are lots of old oak trees dotted about my hometown in the leafy green suburbs of northwest London. And many of them are so large that they must be several hundred years old. There is one in particular which stands beside a roundabout on a road near where I used to live. Every time I see it, I can’t help but notice how each day so many people rush past it in their cars. It is vast, yet it is so evidently unseen by all those who beetle about under its wide stretching boughs every day. If you do stop to look at it and take in its impressive majesty, it is hard not to be overtaken by sheer awe at the monumental mass of this living thing. Seeing its size, with a base trunk that measures several metres in both width and circumference, set me to thinking about its longevity – not least when a similar sized oak tree in a nearby churchyard was sadly wrecked in a storm. It made me think about all the generations of people who have passed by this tree while it has ever so very slowly assumed its steadily increasing presence over the years. It made me think of my great grandparents, long since departed and buried not too far away – just a mile or two up the road, in fact. They must have passed under this oak’s leafy boughs when they were once young, like me. It would have been huge in their eyes too, even then.

 

 

Old oaks espied

by young eyes anew

each generation.

 

 

 

Tim Chamberlain - Old Oak on the Roundabout (2021)

This haiku is a variation on one originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #vssdaily writing prompt: 'oak.' I'm still undecided as to which I prefer.