TURNING TREES

I hadn't been out of the house for a while, so today, in a burst of spring sunshine, I went to the park. I wondered for a while whether I should take a coat, decided against it, then realised it was exactly the kind of day when you need it, but sort of don't. The wind was chilly, the sun was warm.

Well. Anyway. The virus can't stop nature.

All the trees were stretching spindly arms towards the bright blue sky, their roots nestled comfortably in the soft, green grass. I found one tree, barely just beyond a sapling that had the tiniest buds gently sprouting from its fingers. Another sprang somehow from both the soil and a small circular plaque, dedicated to a man who died in 2005 and had been 72: 'always kind, always patient'. I found myself wishing I'd got this far in my life with either of those accolades.

There was one particular tree that caught my eye though. I don't know what kind of tree it is, but it's the kind of twisting tree that spreads in all directions, a tangled nest of old branches and roots; one that never understood the convention for trees to grow upwards, and wouldn't have cared much for it if it had. This tree, in a joyful chaos, was wild, and sort of happily furious, a bulb of shoots and roots, bursting over the grass.

But it wasn't that unkempt glory that made me notice it today. No, today, I stopped because this tree was only half in blossom.

What I mean is, the side facing the sun was bursting with raucous life - white flowers bobbing in the light as though they'd just been woken from a great long sleep. But the other side, the side of the tree in the shade, was still dark and green. I could see the old wintry branches through the leaves. I was struck by the comparison of the two sides - one tree, half in and half out.

I took a photograph and added it to Instagram, and as I often seem to do these days, sat down to write a throwaway poem to go with it. It felt to me as though that tree was telling a story, perhaps one about winter and spring and summer - perhaps one about us, perhaps one about what happens when we turn to the sun.

So this is it. This is the poem about the 'turning trees', only half-in-blossom, that I saw on a day when the sun was warm and the wind was still bitterly cold, all at the same time.


Turning Trees

Half in blossom
Half in breeze
Half in winter
Are the turning trees

Warm as summer
Blue and bright
Cold wind ripples
From winter bite

Full in leaf where
Flowers grow
Buds of spring
Like fall of snow

Half in blossom
Half in freeze
Halfway home
Are the turning trees