Guy Carter - The Walnut Tree (Requiem)

It took a half hour to decimate the walnut tree.
A sodden and dreary late Saturday morning we marched out, purposefully, into the weather.
The tree had been growing for 57 years (I counted the rings, each a forgotten birthday) and it took just 30 minutes to disappear...
Not that it was a particularly significant tree, just your average backyard walnut,
innocuous and insignificant: like a pale dress at a party, not drab, but certainly not eye-catching...
The chainsaw whined into action, complaining at the effort with each choke and splutter,
smoking furiously in the hardening rainfall.
The first bough splattered sawdust like blood onto the long grass,
before collapsing into the dirt with a creaking crack of dying leaves and branches...
Newly dead wood, the epitome of the concept of rigor mortis, a murder victim...
We continued our rape and pillage of the tree, chopping it into firewood sized hunks, the chainsaws motor a frenzied death dance,
the desecration was completed.
The walnut lay in bits and pieces in the ground, forensics couldn't put this carnage together.
57 years, killed; turned into dust and soon-to-be ash.
The garden won't suffer, there are plenty more trees around,
and it was only the average girl in the corner anyway.
Not ugly, just unnoticed.

Guy Carter

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-walnut-tree-requiem/