Billie's Divination Den

I persist regardless of what they do. I mean, I wish they wouldn’t, but in truth it doesn’t matter.

 A war, another war. Another war and then a disease. A disease and then another disease. A disease that they brought back with them. Plant another, next to me. What was it my mother said as she put me in the ground? “Shade” a single word lulled into loose earth scratched up for my bundle of roots. It was then, in 1667, that I learnt I was here for human convenience.

 Convenient I was. Conveniently tall and “wow, so beautiful”, and I stood there and listened to them awe at me holding paper cups of my brothers torn down, hands wrapped round them sipping at the foul brown, and I thought “well if only you fed some of that to me, you have no idea how well I’d grow.”

 Ancient they call me, only because I am the proud survivor of Dutch Elm, Ash Dieback, Anthracnose and… there were more but I can’t remember. If only you could feel the anger I feel, being a surviving witness of the endless human violence. The ability to self-destruct again, and again, but somehow to pull themselves back by a thread. A thread, usually, that’s tethered to us, strung around our roots and cast deep into soft soil and plump earth that they wish to make hollow.

Oxygen, take it. We make enough to feed them all and will continue to do so long after they’ve been swallowed by icy floods. Hot Amazon, hot Bush, hot heat hardening hearts of my slain family over the world. We prepare ourselves to face the massive sun death – just because they won’t be here to enjoy it, why shouldn’t we? We have accepted our place in this, to fund consumerism, capitalism, communism, however they want to wipe themselves out.

Plant your guilt, seed by seed. Build new forests of shame and slavery. It’s too late to stop what you’ve done, just try to treat the next ones better.