A true story, a different point of view
The Holloway Tree
Awaiting execution
…she tried to smile a little before they placed the white hood on her head, but she did not speak…
I wasn’t always dead like this. The wooden parts of me, ‘specially the beam, still remember the surge of the sap in spring, the songbirds, the gentle fruits bursting out all round me, how we whispered each neighbour, one to ‘nother, how we called in the wind, bowed down. But I was marked for the axe, guilty of age and strength, and my executioner came.
I had countless cousins whose boughs served my new purpose, an axe never needed, nor even a judge. I have a lot of time to think on that.
Me and my kind have had many a name, but I’m rarely visited to call me by one of them. The necklace of rope and chain which adorns me invokes dread rather than admiration. I am to be avoided. But that is my function, and so I s’ppose I should be satisfied with a job well done. And if you’re asking: Derrick, or The Leafless Tree are my preferred. I can stand proud with names like those, a touch of humanity, or a murmur of my past.
For the most part, I’m left to my own. They come and check me sometimes, that everything is working. And always the day before a job. In the meantime I wait, I listen. I can hear the…
