The Fortingall Yew
Some twenty two thousand years ago
a bone was notched with a clumsy tock
from a flint glancing across time.
stone struck ticking bone
for some seventeen thousand more years.
And then about three thousand BCE
the yew put down roots when
a settling seed pinned itself to
some holy ground in Perthshire
and called it home
just as the footings for Stonehenge were dug,
here in Fortingall, foundations were grown.
Neolithic tombs built of eschatology gave
a floor show for the sapling yew,
as the graveyard grew.
Our death was its witness.
The sight of burial by a poison bower
soon gave us ways to conjure war
by ritual and artifice.
The yew gave up the long bow
to Thanatos and our vice,
performed by ghosts
in the half life of misty groves.
The yew watched and bore testimony.
And grew.
Until our mercantile ways
saw off large splinters
for sale as souvenirs
and nearly killed it.
It was walled and protected
for its own good, and some say
that the bones that once were
sixty five foot round,
eleven, stretched finger tip to finger tip round,
in the graveyard by the barleycorn,
might be good for another
five thousand years.
Witness of our death.
John Ochiltree 2007-03-05
