THE MOTHER TREE
Go to the pine to learn of the pine
̶ Matsuo Bashō
Spring empties us of snow, spits us winter-lean Fat gritted rhizomes, our roots upend
feeble as sea foamed on rock fast with limpet full dulse. & we swing sparse growth sunwise
Although earth loved us with harvest we know we unremembered sun’s ochred warmth
let her alchemy of ruin & decay became caulk blotted our skin rot-bruised, out of light.
filling our slatted bones with uncolour grey. But the Mother Tree, she lives in unforgetting
The five-layered trunk sings winter long making her ceilidh with mycelial kin, she sings.
in the bramble-bloodied dark, where the loch feels for the glaury shore. Listen. Hear them.
Her needles are threaded to sew belonging between all life Together, they sing a mending
re-tuning. Once iced, lit dust dances in her air-stir whispers. to hallow a leaf’s budding.
Fraying frost-melt halos hoof-hollows. & fresh-flitted, the peat breathes its wet-warm.
This is the way we remember connection. This is how we know that the sun will return.
That it will dissolve winter between us unfreeze words of darkening. Grow from a tear
return us to the pine, children of light, a gilding above & below this canopy of hope.
Cáit O’Neill McCullagh started writing poems at home in Easter Ross in December 2020. Over forty have been published online and in print. With co-author Sinead McClure, she was a winner of Dreich’s ‘Classic Chapbook Competition 2022’. For more information visit https://linktr.ee/caitjomac