I am Hawthorn by Emily Cullen

I am hawthorn

Beautiful and forbidding
I inspire reverence
a healthy reticence.
You might find me near
holy wells and people tend
not to trespass when they
spot my copious blossoms
waving white from roadsides
through May and June
because it’s widely known
I hold the sí in the
shade of my embrace.

I’m bountiful, not half as austere
as people think, I let brides pick
my boughs in Bealtaine
pluck my haws at Halloween
and for eons I’ve been handy
at hedgerows and boundaries
to keep sheep and cattle at bay
with my gnarled, prickly thorns
musky scent of sex and death.

They’re sure I must be lonely
standing on the quotidian
like some vestigial sentinel
guarding the Otherworld
the only tree in the field
but I carry my gnosis
my own enchantment
deep within my branches
can still hear echoes
of the ancients
and I refuse to weep
like the pussy willow.

How my sap rises
as I watch planners
propose ring-roads
close to my ring forts.
Somehow their mortal
drawings disappear
eventually, their zones
steer clear because I am
a tree of life, sacred
till the ends of time.

Emily’s latest collection, Conditional Perfect, is published by Doire Press and can be found here.

Find out more about Emily on our Contributors’ Page.

(Photo: peter castleton/flickr.com/CC-BY SA 2.0)

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Emily Cullen

Emily Cullen is the Meskell UL-Fifty Poet in Residence where she lectures in Creative Writing. Emily has published three poetry collections: Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), In Between Angels and Animals (Arlen House, 2013) and No Vague Utopia (Ainnir Publishing, 2003). Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), was included in The Irish Times round-up of “the best new poetry of 2019.” Emily is also a cultural producer and she served as Director of the Patrick Kavanagh Centenary (2004) and Director of Cúirt International Festival of Literature (2017-2019).

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