Buy a Better Light Bulb

Buy a Better Light Bulb

I watched them fill the syringe with poison,
then push it beneath the bark.
They stood there in the morning sunshine,
giving a living tree the dark.

I begged her, “Please, don’t do it.
Think of how long it’s stood.”
She said, “It takes the light from my house.”
As though that made it good.

“But the tree was here before your house,
before your windows and wall.
Why don’t you knock the house down, then?”
She wouldn’t hear me at all.

That tree had grown through years of weather,
with roots held deep below.
A living thing sent down from God—
what right had she to say, “You go”?

Within six months its leaves had withered.
I watched each branch turn bare.
Then men arrived to cut it down,
and left a hole in the air.

The birds sat lined along the fence,
their heads turned towards the space.
Their little feet still gripped the wire—
who’d stolen their resting place?

The caterpillars in my garden
seemed to search for what had been.
Their cosy home was gone forever,
with all its rooms of green.

I couldn’t buy another great tree,
or give those years straight back.
I couldn’t stitch the branches on
or mend each poisoned crack.

So I bought smaller trees and shrubs,
and planted what I could,
to shelter birds in my own garden,
behind where that murdered tree had stood.

Somewhere above the cats and rats,
some leaves to hide among.
I wanted birds back in my garden.
I missed the way they’d sung.

I couldn’t look towards my neighbour
without seeing what she’d done.
She hadn’t held a knife that morning.
She hadn’t fired a gun.

But I had watched her take a life
because its shade fell from above.
It takes your light? Buy a better bulb.
That tree was grown with love.