Farewell to our tree…
This eucalypt…
It was the last tree left standing along the fence. They are going to build there now. More concrete.
It was the last roosting place for cockatoos, the last bearer of blossoms for flying foxes on this bit of land.
Once, when this tree was young it was surrounded by bush, buzzing with life and colour, other trees close by, sharing the soil with grass and shrubs gathered around their roots protectively. As this tree grew and spread its branches the land was changed. Houses were built, and then hospitals – our hospital. It grew hotter at night, more concrete, tarred roads. Still this tree stood. When the houses were demolished and the other trees chopped down, this one tree remained alone.
When will people notice and learn that trees and plants talk to each other and nurture each other through their complex system of roots and fungal brain under the ground? How could this tree not, in some tree-like way be aware of everything gone around it when the information no longer came back through the networks from other roots near nearby?
Each day countless people coming to and fro to work, or for treatment, or to visit family and friends exchanged breath for breath with this tree – life giving. This tree gave – oxygen, shade, life to the communities of its roots, bark, branches, leaves and flowers. It gave food. It gave homes. It gave shelter through the night.
Today all the communities it held were reduced to wood chips. And some of the people who passed it every day didn’t even notice there was a little less oxygen for them today. Some of them laughed and said they didn’t much like that tree.
And some of us cried, because we knew we had shared breath for breath, day after working day with that tree for over a decade.
We lost a friend, today.
We lost our tree.
The Wistful Dragon 