The Gap at Sycamore Gap

When I heard that the tree was no more at Sycamore Gap, I felt a sadness at its demise. We had just been warned of Storm Agnes which was approaching the UK with its windy savagery, churning up grey skies and heralding the beginning of colder, darker days. I thought that it was Agnes who had felled the tree but this was not the case. She had other havoc to wreak.

No, Sycamore Gap had a human enemy: a teenager is believed to have taken a chainsaw and deliberately cut it down. Reasons are not clear for his motive at this time but there is no doubt that this act does not come from a place of happiness.

I felt compelled to write about it, like Mike Singleton did, although for different reasons. He lives closer to it whereas I have merely been a visitor, but still, it occupies a significant place in my memories - good memories -and deserves any tribute that I can offer it.

And so, here goes.

***

A tree was felled, a youth accused:

An act to keep himself amused?

It seems a callous way to act

A tree is dead and can't come back.

There was a gap, a sycamore

How did it find the fertile floor

To plant itself in such a spot?

Perhaps wind driven? Or bird dropped?

I like to think it chose it there;

The seed was very much aware

Of how the placement of its trunk

Would please so many with its bulk.

The place it chose has kudos still:

From manifestation of Rome's will

To conquer and resist with strength

Marauding hoards with fierce intent:

The wall will stay across the gap

But a wound's been opened by the lack

Of its solid presence in that groove,

Its attraction continually proved.

Now, there's just a bit of rubble

That section barely worth the trouble:

An historical site without its spread

Of dark green leaves above your head.

I have stood beneath your canopy

A gift that was bestowed on me;

A family trip, three generations,

To trudge and hike in veneration

To a feat of engineering

On the landscape, domineering

For miles and miles from coast to coast

Illustrating Hadrian's boast

That he could protect and drive the Picts

To stay behind stones and sticks.

*

The rain was pelting down that day.

I struggled hard to find the way

Across the gleaming rounded stones;

Hadrian's wall's very bones

Under my feet, a disordered jumble

Designed to make me take a tumble.

My family moving off ahead,

Old men, children, husband-led

Down steep stone paths, prepared to trip;

A clumsy hiker, my ample hips

And confidence quaked with every inch;

But drive I found, at a pinch,

To continue through rain soaked glass

To where you stood proud from the grass.

*

A celebrity tree, a poster tree,

Viewed from afar by tourists many

Solitary; standing in the gap,

Just existing there with no mishap.

Until the day the engine roared

Your beauty severed and easily floored,

To lie in pieces by the wall

No longer the focus of visitors' thrall.

I saw the cut the young man made,

A clean one, golden rings displayed.

I hated it: your insides out

Horizontal, branches out

Limbs splayed and trapped by dirty ground

Unable to float on wind inbound.

I wish it was Agnes who'd brought you down

And not the hand of some human clown;

As something natural occurring

Not slicing blades, oily and whirring

Doesn't seem so bad somehow -

Just Nature and its weather plough.

*

I'm glad I saw you at your best

Summer blousiness, leaves all dressed

And thank you for the shelter given

Protection from rain's steady river.

*

I wish that you could still be there.

I wish that you could still be there.

*

The link to Mike's piece is here too:

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