It has always stood here with an opening at the side of its thick trunk; an opening that resembles lips which has spread wider through the decades.

As a child, that opening supported my foot when I clambered up and onto its branches. From the top, Coeden heard all my dreams and fears while I hid from the world and childhood traumas. During autumn, it revealed its true splendour. Through winter it stood bare and proud. When Spring approached, green buds appeared in furry clusters. Blue tits skittered through new foliage.

I courted my late wife beneath it’s leafy canopy. Our two sons built a tree house between two sturdy boughs. They posted coded messages into that same opening to join all my boyhood whispers and, through the years, Coeden has witnessed the steady progress of my children’s growing and my gradual decline into old age.

Town council planners claim the bypass will ease traffic congestion. I won’t be driving down their new road, I promise Coeden, even if it were laid with twenty carat gold instead of Tarmac. I hear its branches creak and stir which seems to echo my own sad sigh of resigned acceptance but, I know, a part of me will die when, next week, the axe falls upon Coeden, my tree of life.