MY FIRST ASH TREE

Miss Broadbent took us ten-year-olds

through the paddock past grazing ponies

and whisking tails

to a tree.

‘This is an ash – the common ash, boys.’

We stood round her in a ring

so she wouldn’t need to raise her voice.

She reached for a frond.

‘See this? – It’s a rachis,’ she said,

‘R-A-C-H-I-S, rhymes with “lake is”.

Morris Minor raised his hand:

‘The lake is what, Miss?’

‘Just is, Morris.  Is.  Notice this cluster –

always an odd number.

What’s an odd number, Hancock?’

‘One, three, five, Miss. . .’

‘Good.  And you see this rachis has nine leaves,

all opposing (not against each other, just opposite, see?)

except this last one.

Like a bunch of keys.’

The green keys shushed her plaintive voice,

but she didn’t hear.

‘Take out your note pads and pencils

and sketch a rachis.’

‘What’s a rachis, Miss?’

The tree looked down on the school,

its limbs clothed by shaking green keys.

As I drew my rachis, I remembered

Mr Gloyne telling us about the Ash of the Worlds,

home to the northern gods before they’d died,

of their rainbow bridge from earth to its crown.

Above it they’d hung the dome of giant Ymir’s skull,

and sparks had shot up from the Kingdom of Fire

to the cranial vault,

shimmering stars and sun and moon.

At the end, when the giants attacked the Ash of the Worlds,

the stars fell like swallows

exhausted by their lifelong flight.

I’d only have to pause in my sketching

to catch sight of Heimdall’s horn

that would announce the last fight,

or, glancing up, would catch a glitter

from the golden cockerel that should have warned the gods

or see the four famished deer grazing those leaves.

‘We must go back to the classroom now.’

My body followed the grey bobbed hair

past the tail-lashing ponies –

but my heart remained in Yggdrasil.¹

^{1. The ash tree in Norse mythology
     that overspreads the world}