This year, National Tree Week runs from 26th November until 4th December, and these seven poems capture, in very different ways, the many guises of these landmarks in our landscapes.
Many thanks to all the Ribble Valley Stanza poets for sharing their work with us.
Hazels in Pendle Bridge Wood
At the foot of the renowned hill
in Pendle Bridge Wood
the hazel is ubiquitous
as tree or leafy shrub
With the onset of spring
yellow catkins announce
the promise of nutty treats
for squirrel, deer, and mouse
Used as wattle and daub
or coppiced for fence posts
hazels once provided shelter
for their medieval hosts
Did our ancestors know
the ancient Celtic tale
of nine hazel trees that grew
around a sacred pool?
The nuts that fell into the water
were eaten by the salmon
Their spirit, absorbed by fish
became a source of wisdom’
Jenny Palmer
The Weeping Beech
by the Birch trail at Stocks reservoir
Why do you weep Beech tree?
Why are your branches twisted and curled?
Why do they reach down to the ground
instead of up to the sky?
Do you weep because your trunk was cut
so close to the earth?
Is it because you are scarred with human names
whose rough boots scraped along your branches,
as they climbed upon your almost horizontal limbs?
Or is that you weep because you yield no nuts,
when the wild trees are so fecund?
Your curtain of leaves shields human eyes
from the sight of the demolished church
and flooded valley now almost dry.
Rosemary Moore
The Venus Ash Tree 
Spring Wood, Whalley, in autumn
Ash trees are known as Venus of the Woods,
and the name is a sign.
Roman girls, coming of age
would visit me to surrender their toys.
Nowadays, my loving heart
is a hockey stick, an oar to row,
a snooker cue, a bat, a club, an arrow,
providing a handle
on the world, and mechanical advantage.
However, I gauge
that a handle is barren,
a twig too far, a futile extension.
Vault above yourself, you’ll still land
far short of my thirty-five-metre stand.
I've prospered here for three hundred years.
One day suffices to strip all my leaves,
shocking the surrounding trees
who cling more tightly to theirs.
Pretensions of strength are what
you must drop.
Return to the start.
I’ll reserve you a gift under my tree
of whirling keys, helicoptering seed.
Philip Burton
Shinrin-Yoku
Japanese for ‘Forest Bathing.’ Inspired by Gisburn Forest,
We wander through autumn trees
see their tops fingertip the clouds.
The grit path is rendered silent
under browning throws of leaf loam,
its soft sponge easing our pace
on the trail leading into the forest’s
private darker part.
Tree trunks paddle
in waving moss on the spa room floor,
as their wide arms support
dripping lichen hair, and revel
in their close friends’ warmth.
Synchronised they gentle us
with silence.
We breathe in
their humid aroma as they shower
us with yellowing drifts of history,
then wrap our speeding minds in
soft towels of slow time.
Turning too soon
we tear ourselves away and hear
the tapping trickle of the brook.
Bird song echoes from tile-hard walls
as our restored feet crunch the boot-
flattened path towards the restless
and cramped car park.
Alison McNulty
The Slaughtered Trees
They cry for mercy when the wind lends
them a voice, whistles through their
creaking, swaying branches.
With an eerie moaning the wood
is groaning, trees come alive at night,
when man is silent, out of sight.
They cry for mercy when the wind lends
them a voice, sing haunting, enchanting
melodies, otherworldly symphonies.
Big old sycamore tree, such character
and majesty, do you have a memory? Many
times I grazed a knee, climbing your branches.
Big old sycamore tree, steeped in wisdom and
history, what future do you see? Do you sense
the axeman, lurking in the shadows?
He's about to cut you down, replace your
home with his own. They cry for mercy
when the wind lends them a voice.
Anna L Thoburn
Three trees, four seasons at Edisford
Winter
Where the path turns from the empty field
in a muddy stumbling down
to first view of curving river,
a stately silhouette of upstanding branches
shoulders above its leaf-fast peers.
Spring
Bathed in brightness and birdsong,
the river bank is full of awakening;
calls you to come closer
and the sky-reacher resolves as not one
but three trees in close companionship,
each now taking on a different tint
as buds swell and break into leaf.
Summer
Now the river is alive and flashing brightness,
three trees show clearly unrelated:
purple-leafed maple; billowing grass-green
of horse chestnut; and, beside and above
silver green, shivering fingers of willow.
And yet, their trunks stand in shared soil.
Below the grassy ground, what messages
are shared by entangled roots?
Autumn
As daylight shrinks and sun slips low,
purple leaves of maple wrinkle to dull umber,
drop dully to the ground, leaving
a few rags dangling from fragile twigs.
Now is the chestnut’s chance to glow
as green ripens to yellow; but still
the willow flaunts its shimmering elegance
above, dominates the sky.
Maureen Fenton
Trees
1
i would imagine a place of trees
and be there
curled up
my head among roots
with the owls and foxes
i would sleep the night through
and when the light came
crawl back into the world
unseen and softly.
2
beyond the window the lawns settle,
November fires chomp on fallen leaves,
their little red mouths eat them up.
the empty trees watch this yearly ritual;
they are used to it now and cannot turn away
to hide their nakedness,
but glory in this exposure of their bare limbs
proud against the sky.
3
trees
in the half light look liquid,
leaves swim in currents of dusk
with a grace I do not possess.
but if I sit here among them,
grow roots, attend to my branches,
perhaps my time will be like theirs,
rooted, strong, with arms full of dancing light.
Frances Malaney