is what my father would recite each year
when I told him it was planting time again –
and certainly that’s true of old Reuben:
whenever I’ve grown more trees than I need,
his daughter will fetch them for planting
high on the moor where they won’t struggle
with deer damage, like mine, but with winds.
This year by way of exchange he sent down
three bags of gooseberries, topped and tailed.
No planting here today, nor up there –
curtains opening to the day’s fine drizzle and
a few lazy snowflakes that thicken and take over,
the moor already white, ground too frosted for roots
and old Reuben away to a hospital bed in a town
before I’ve had time to send word he’s rich:
they’ve worked out what a fifty-year-old tree’s
worth in dollars – though he’d be having none of that.
A life farming up on the moor, a man knows
that to take, you give. That moment:
hands in dark earth spreading young roots,
a calm. As of a slate wiped clean.
Jane Routh In 2016, Professor T. M. Das, University of Calcutta, is reported (Observer, Canada) to have estimated a tree is worth $193,250 on this basis: a tree living for 50 years will generate $31,250 worth of oxygen, provide $62,000 worth of air pollution control, control soil erosion and increase soil fertility to the tune of $31,250, recycle $37,500 worth of water and provide a home for animals worth $31,250. This figure does not include the value of fruits, lumber or beauty derived from trees. (The figures here allow for the dollar’s 25% inflation on the 2016 calculation. Such estimates appear not to have been undertaken by other writers.)
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