Fare Thee Well, Beloved Sycamore
The Sycamore Gap Tree, Also Known As The Robin Hood Tree, Is Gone: Revived for Ellie Hoovs' July Poetry Prompt Contest (Day 15) “Memory, Shelter, and the Poetics of Rootedness”
Introduction
This week, the iconic three-hundred-year-old Sycamore Gap Tree was vandalised and chopped down by a sixteen-year-old vandal.
The main image is by Jim Kearney
My friend Emily's art to remember the Tree by
For Ellie Hoovs' July Poetry Prompt Contest (Day 15) “Memory, Shelter, and the Poetics of Rootedness” that you can read about here:
Fare Thee Well, Beloved Sycamore
🌳🍁🌿🌲🌳🍂🍃🌳
Someone Felled It With A Black Blade
The North's Iconic Sycamore
Our Hearts Are Broken And Dismayed
This Ancient Tree Is Now No More
🌳
Now Let Us Build A Monument
To Remember This Icon By
Beautiful Tree We Do Lament
It's Memory Will Never Die
🌳
Now That It's Gone, It Shed It's Sap
Can We Keep A Piece In Our Home?
Robin Hood's Tree, Sycamore Gap
Seeds Of CAmraderie Now Sown
🌳
Take Fallen Boughs For Charity
Remember This Sycamore Tree
🌳🍁🌿🌲🌳🍂🍃🌳
About the Creator
Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred
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My New Book is Finally Here
My poetry collection Beautiful and Brutal Things is done. It's actually done and finally published over 270 pages. Over a year of my life went into this book. More than a year, really. Long days at my computer, sometimes seven days a week because I couldn't stop even when I probably should have. Then two months of editing that felt harder than the writing itself. But it's finished, and I'm still standing, and the book is real.
By Tim Carmichaela day ago in BookClub
Comments (21)
It's sad when nature is not appreciated. Excellent, Mike.
What a lovely poetic tribute to that lovely tree. I was so genuinely upset when it was torn down by some terrors.
Such vandals, irrespective of age must be penalized heavily.
Oh heartbreakingly beautiful to honor this tree.
I luv that you wrote a memorial for a tree. ❤️ Wth is wrong with teenagers this days though, wow omg.
Tragic. Beautiful eulogy.
It is so sad. Lovely poem.
This is so heartbreaking 💔 Thank you for sharing this beautiful poem in her honor!
Terrible isn’t it. I only just read Rachel’s piece about this yesterday and had initially missed yours! 😔
So sad. How could he? Why? 🤍 Beautifully written but just heartbreaking that you had to write it at all 🤍
😭😭
Fabulous tribute!!!❤️❤️💕 Read about this and found it unbelievable that a youth would do such a thing.
Yeah, that's ridiculous. I just don't get some.people. Great tribute.
Captured the sadness of it being gone beautifully, Mike.
Why did the boy do that? Was he under any influence of drugs or alcohol? Mental instability? So tragic! Your poem is beautiful!
was ever a more powerful cry than this? children raised in connection and love don’t grow up to do this. this should be a massive wake up call to the neglect of the youth….. NOT inciting calls for punishment
I hope the 16 year old will be chopped down as a punishment! Sorry to hear about the tree!
I was so gutted when I heard about this, just WHY???
😭
So sad. Just like all other people mentioned in the Guardian, I am struggling to understand what moved the teenager to do this.
Tragic. What a way to gain your fifteen minutes of fame/shame.