Summer

Dancing shadows, rushing streams
Bring on, bring on, my summer dreams
Muddy green seas only sometimes blue
A red sky sunset for me and you.

Harvested cornfields, shady trees
Horse with flies and foxes with fleas
A giggle of children running nigh bare
Hazards abound but they don't care.

Summer thoughts and summer highs
Pull us through winter's pallid skies
We who dwell in this hemisphere
Need the summer every year.

June 2004

Trees Company

I only ever wanted to
Be an ordinary tree,
To grow big, green and upright
- have people look up at me.

From a drifting seed to maturity
Growing stronger tier on tier
Hosting birds and squirrels
As the seasons changed the year.

Left alone for decades 
Happy all the time
Until the impact of a car
Meant I became a shrine.

Putting flowers at my foot
Folk gathered and they wept,
For the dead were only youngsters
And forever now they slept.

I'm not just a tree now 
I stand for something more
An earthly reminder of some people
Who tread a heavenly shore.

I often passed the big tree on my way to my office. This particular morning the area was all torn up and cordoned off by police tape. In a small village every one knows every one and I quickly learned that three of the local young folk had died when their car slid on the wet bend and rammed the tree. Not doped, not drunk, just unlucky and now just dead. To me, now, this lovely tree suddenly appeared sad.