MEMORIES

Do you remember particular trees?

At Marchmont, where I was born, the garden

Had one sycamore sapling: perhaps my age,

But useless to a small boy. Sciennes

Was an Eden, apple, cherry, chestnut,

And the pear whose branches sauntered and rambled;

I have not plundered or climbed a taller

Tree. Once an exotic green of budgie

Evaded my fingertips. The main memory

From Valleyfield was the birch which William

Clawed down in my photo. Mayshade had

A neat conifer growing too rapidly

From inches to feet. The elm at Straiton

Stricken, cost two days work and two

Days burning to a Polish escapee from

Martial law. Here a slight lime-tree

Sprouts, and glues, and drops seeds, and fades

To a premature mite-induced autumn. These

Are my tree-memories - and what are yours?

These are the places I have had as home; Sciennes is pronounced "sheens"; William was the cat where I lodged a while in London.