A hundred withered autumnal tears;
a hundred pining springs,
without a breath for the hopes and fears
that come to you and me.
It must have stood for a hundred years,
the stoic chestnut tree,

a hundred summer’s drunken cheers
inside the wintered rings.
After it was felled and free
from wooden reason,
by men with stoic bills to pay
and relatives with more
(all was released in half a day
spent with an axe and saw)

it went four ways, the chestnut tree -
one for every season.
The second was to Mickey Tighe,
who made us lakeside benches,
my father lay in all his grace
within the walls defined.

The first was to the carver’s place
where coffins are designed;
they sit there still, before the sky,
and tideless water clenches.
The fourth my brother planned to turn
into a simple clock;
but I and Genna split a load
and the rayeburn could be fed.

The third lot sat beside the road
‘til winter reared its head,
maybe from lost chimes we’ll learn
that Charon does not dock.
More and more, these broken wintry days,
people say I look just like my father.
Some nights I scorn the rayeburn’s warmth and flee;
the moon above ignores what time delays,
and, sitting by the lake, I wish I’d rather
know what felled that stoic chestnut tree.

Sean Godley

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-chestnut-tree/