The walnut tree

Alone, strong and vulnerable, like a loving father, in a landscape of wide fields and long lanes. The walnut tree on the right, just before the crossroads, on the road to Bonneuil. He takes me for a walk…

As a boy he would sit all day in its branches watching the walnuts in their lime husks quiver then drop to the ground.

Wasting, stretching precious childhood time; laughing at the faded red tractors as they bounced along the sun-burnt tracks on russet-dusted tyres.

Then watching the bottle-blue night chase the farmhands from the fields and into the chipped-chalk lanes, puffing their way towards him on stubborn wheels, a rose-gold day of sweat and dry dirt now damp on their tired boxing glove faces.

And every autumn he said goodbye.

Then sat small and sad, cold hands in knitted mittens, staring from the window of the pale Renault as it rattled down the white-mist road and past the walnut tree, now austere, grey and embarrassed by winter’s nakedness.

And lonely. But only as a child could understand it, guarding the storm-stripped leaves, the broken nut shells crushed in a dragged-out mess of swede-coloured snow; waiting for the rain to wash the remnants away and the sun to dry them to dust.

Then the spring and Easter yellow, and tender white, mint and lemon drifts.

The walnut tree felt the long legs wrapped around its branches; held and supported the hesitant feet and hands that explored its climbing limbs.

With each year he found it easier to reach up and pull himself into its arms, and the farmhands grew younger; their faces smoother, their bicycles sleeker…

Small, darting, dirt-brown, grey and black, old leaves play around his ankles, cartwheel, then scatter, at his feet. They move so quickly; for a moment we believe they could be sparrows.

He puts his arms around his walnut tree; pushes his palms, then drags them back over its ancient skin. He rests an old cheek, then his ear to it, pressing his fingertips to its waist. He closes his gentle eyes and listens to its heart beat.