There was always something strange about
The tree by the clifftop farm,
It hadn’t been there when I was young
Till the storm blew down the barn,
Then once the land was cleared it grew
At a pace I’d never seen,
A raggedy, twisted wreck of a tree
That my wife said was obscene.

‘Why don’t we cut it down,’ she said,
‘Why do you let it grow?’
‘It doesn’t do any harm,’ I said,
‘It’s there for the winter blow.
It stands where it will protect the house
From the fiercest winter storm,
It may be ugly to see,’ I said
‘But it helps to shelter our home.’

The roots were massive and twisted, and
They spread, all over the place,
They tunneled under the house and then
Came up by the fireplace,
I chopped them off and I poisoned those
That tried to come through the floor,
And then I found there were other roots
Jamming our old front door.

The winter came in a rush that year
And we were buried in snow,
We hoped that there’d be an early thaw
But it didn’t hurry to go.
We stayed inside and we stoked the fire
With the roots I’d cut from the tree,
The food went down in the larder, but
The fire burned merrily.

I hadn’t so much as glanced outside
For a month, or maybe more,
The wind would howl at the chimney pots
But to go outside, what for?
Then Spring shone over the windowsill
And the snow began to melt,
So finally we could venture out,
I can’t tell how we felt.

For out there at the side of the house
The tree had grown grotesque,
It seems it had continued to grow
Beneath its snow-clad vest,
For branches snaked across to the roof
And clung to the chimney pots,
To hold itself upright and aloof
Where I’d chopped the roots right off.

But what had disturbed and frightened me
Was the tree had grown in height,
Its gnarled and twisted trunk so high
It was almost out of sight,
It disappeared in a darkening cloud
That seemed to hover and stay,
While other clouds were adrift up there
It was still there, day by day.

At night, with terrible grinding sounds
The branches moved on the roof,
They tumbled off the chimney pots,
Believe me, that’s the truth!
The wife said, ‘We should have cut it down
When we had the chance, last Spring,
But now it’ll probably take the house
So we can’t do anything.’

I know you’ll never believe me now,
It all seems so absurd,
But I broke out the elephant gun
At the sound of just one word,
We lay abed with it overhead
And the tree began to hum,
It woke me as I listened, and then
The word I heard was, ‘Fum!’

I aimed the gun up the tree that night
At those penetrating sounds,
I couldn’t have fired enough if I
Had had a thousand rounds.
And something hurtled on past me then
To land right down in the bay,
The tree was silent, it ceased to hum
And I chopped it down next day.

David Lewis Paget