The stuff of life unfolding

This rotten tree stump is in the front garden of our friends’ house.

I spotted it as we walked down their path to check on their post this afternoon, and I was struck by the variety of leaves and fungi scattered over it, and the blackened and cracked exterior of the base of the trunk. I thought it looked beautiful, even in its decaying state.

In praise of decay 

So much is deadly in the shiny new,
Persistent plastic choking out our life,
The landfill of each ego’s empty stuff,
Where poison and possession still accrue.
So praise Him in the old and mouldering,
In pale gold leaf-fall losing shape and edge,
In mottled compost rustling and rich,
From which the stuff of life is still unfolding.
 
Change and decay is what our plastic needs
To break the bleak persistence of our waste.
Pray that we learn the lost arts of our past,
The arts of letting go and sowing seeds,
That secrets of the lowly and the least
Might save us from the dreadful things that last.

Rev. Dr. Malcolm Guite
Poet-Priest, and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge (2003-2020)