Roots sapping and spreading strangle our strength.
Our future harvest, our precious essence,
drawn off to that dark heart of wood
enticing visions of imagined sweet fruits.
Bold shires, brave-hearts all, beat your blades to
Deep-biting plowshares. Dig out the poisioning roots.
Too long without trimming, that towering tree
has grown too gross and fails to fruit.
Hear the groaning trunk. Hear the gruesome load.
Hear the wail for the hirsuit woodsman's axe.
Swing well and wisely shire wards and woodsmen.
Pity the old pine poor and poverished.
With caring cuts and prescribed persecution,
Hew away and heal the tottering tree.
Look to the lengthy, the lowest of limbs,
seemingly strong, seeking their sunlight,
forgeting their trusses, failing their trunk.
See there the start of cracks at the crotch
rending the tree right down to the roots.
Low bowing boughs bent and broken,
slumping askew to one and all,
canting there to the South and West,
canting there to the North and East.
Here is not found the embracing tendril,
no braiding vine, no bonding twine,
no fruitfull tangle, no fending bramble.
Split and splintered, fractures spread.
Weakened is the trunk. Waning is the tree.
Strong, shire-sired timber meisters,
haul out your hooks, limber your ladders
pick up your poles, prepare your pruners,
sharpen your sythes, and hone your hatchets.
The limbs need lopping. The tree needs trimming!