Courage, April 2020

COURAGE

Suppose there was a tree
that did not burn,
but instead contained a fire
to light the taper of our hopes.

Catkin havoc gives a clue -
red flames thrown on the mud
like toys in a bedroom
and a time of different measure.

Suppose this tree were prone to feel
itself a fish, flashing iridescent
scales through water;
or a full-throated bird
meeting sky with song
at the branch of dusk; its burr
a meteor of celestial light
trailing through trunk fissures.

Suppose this tree black poplar,
native of our unbound minds,
unmoved by difference
between land and flood.

A match struck on longing.

Populus Nigra by Otto Wilhelm Thomé (1885)

Black Poplar

The black poplar (Populus Nigra) is one of Britain’s most ancient timber trees. It is also one of our rarest and the Cotswold Water Park is one of the tree’s last strongholds. Before we were all drawn home to safety, I walked the boundary of Lake 32 and was thrilled to find the black poplar’s red (male) catkins – known as devil’s fingers – cast around the grass.

Native to riverbanks and wet grasslands, black poplar is resplendent, long-lived and can grow above thirty metres tall. Its bark is rugged, dark and thick with bosses, burrs and fissures. Its timber is springy and absorbent, known for its buoyancy and resistance to fire and has been used in the making of ammunition boxes, rifle butts, clogs, matches, oars, thatching poles, cartwheels, wagon bottoms, floorboards. Arrows made from Black Poplar were found on the Mary Rose.

Constable's 'The Hay Wain' immortalised black poplar (1821)

Black poplar declined catastrophically in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as new, faster and straighter growing hybrids were discovered and the replanting of native trees stopped. Female species were cut down because of irritation with the wispy white ‘downfluff’ they shed in spring and early summer, leaving so few behind that they can no longer germinate naturally. Fewer than 500 female Black Poplars are thought to remain in the UK, less than one percent of the total. At the Cotswold Water Park, 350 individual trees have been identified so far and 60% of those are female, making it a nationally important population that could help to conserve the species.

For such an iconic tree, the black poplar doesn’t feature much in literary history. William Cowper and Gerard Manley Hopkins both mourned the felling of poplar trees in their poetry and the demise of a certain kind of landscape, youth and pleasure; Billie Holliday’s strange fruit hung from poplar branches. According to Greek mythology, the black poplar was created after Phaeton's fatal attempt to drive Apollo's chariot. Phaeton's sisters were so inconsolable in mourning, they were turned into black poplars, forever after raising their arms to the sun, rooted in the river of their tears.

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It is in our folklore traditions that the black poplar’s significance to our lives now surfaces so clearly. In British folklore, black poplar has ever been known as a protective shield to fend off unknown fears - a twig or slither of bark slipped under the pillow is said to bring quiet nights without worry. Pagan tradition counsels the addition of black poplar to herbal incense whenever you find yourself in need of that little bit of extra nerve.

I didn’t plan it this way when I first saw those hell-red catkins in the mud, but to my poet’s mind, the symbolism of black poplars – their fortitude, perseverance and resilience in the face of danger, their capacity to hold our sorrows and fears, to fire our dreams - make it just the tree for these strange, strange times.

Go well, friends. Stay safe x

JLM Morton1 April 2020Comment