The Old Tree - Gender Reversal Experiment

No voice for them.

As diggers fallen his mates no longer stood.

Cut down.

He is a dignified old tree. The aeon of life scared upon his branches, worn proudly as a badge of honour. His dendrochronology had dated him to millions of years old, as far back as the Devonian period.

The evidence of his tree rings, revealed periods of extremes. Life sapping droughts and rejuvenating floods. Blistering hot summers and freezing cold winters.

The existence of life played out before him: His Indigenous custodians, banqueting on his fruit...Europeans cruelly hacking at his bark...Among his long beard a secret held, the rifle of Ned Kelly kept...The jumbuck and the swagman sheltered under the canopy of his branches...The lead bored deep into his trunk from the soldiers of war...An activist.

His shaky weathered old branches don't bare fruit any more. His leaves have turned grey. His cycle of life choked on the dirty pollution of progress. His love of life hung in disrepair.
He is the patriarch of what is left of the forest.

I apologised to this quaint old tree for the imposition of the chains.
I would not let them take him. He is a legacy of our history and he deserves respect and distinction.

As a father, I want my sons to meet this gentleman tree, as he is now tall and proud. Not as wood chips scattered over the playground beneath their feet. I hugged his trunk as if I had shaken his hand and no matter how long it took, I would stay here, chained.