The Story Of A Tree

A poem by Jessica Kashdan-Brown

Jess is one of our volunteers and co-lead of the Creative Team here at Create the Future. In honour of National Tree Week, Jess has shared her wonderful poem, The Story Of A Tree.

---

This poem, like ‘There’s No Such Thing As’, were part of the Predictive Text Poetry Project, a lockdown project during which I asked people to respond to various prompts using predictive text. The predictive text dictionaries on our phones are personalised and constantly updating, according to the conversations we’re having, providing powerful insight into the collective consciousness of the present moment. I collated the responses to each prompt, cutting and rearranging them into a poem. This poem and ‘There’s No Such Thing As were created from responses from 30+ contributors.

You can read ‘There’s No Such Thing As’ here.

---

The tree is magnificent
Very big, very specific
Isolating enough
The tree is so beautiful, I can’t believe it
And I love how the garden looks
In the sun and magical mists
I love the way I feel about it
It’s been so much for me
To come back to
To get back to 

I love this place

*

The tree is a good thing for the evening
The best way to get a chance to look at the end of the day
And all that I told you
Can be a bit more atmospheric
And the rain…
The tree will drink it all night 

*

The storm forecast sounds horrendous
I don’t know what day it will arrive

*

The tree is still there
But not as much as you want
Missing a couple of colours
A little bit of a mess
The tree is in the way of your doing things
There is no space for the years of living
Tomorrow, get the new version
I’ll give him the money for you to get it done

*

The tree is in a lot of pain
But
The tree is the most stubborn of all these plants

*

The tree is in my bed
And I am sleeping, in the garden
The tree is smiling at all the pretty things
Happy to be

So what is the next step in the morning?

*

The tree is in my head
It has been in my mind for over a year or two or three
A noise, feeling

The tree is the garden of trees
I don’t know what it’s for
The answer for climate change?
A nice mood?
A chance to get a good idea?
A good place to get out of the situation?
Life?
A little something to be?
So beautiful
So much better than I thought

The tree is the same as…
The tree is the best of us

*

The tree is up and running again
For all your help and support
Come see
This is going to work
The tree is not finished
And in the sun with a good day
Together we can get anything done
For a few years, we will write the same story