Drawing trees

  • Posted on December 12, 2024 at 12:49 pm

A poem for a grandchild I may never meet, who will not know me. But who will surely draw trees.

One day you will draw stick people.

They will all smile and look back
with dots for eyes.
Sun will shine, reach out with rays.

Soon, stick people will have hands
like coppiced willow.
Like the sun has a smile.

Cloudy trees will become dark
woods with bears, scary tales, with claws
reaching out for you

but still furry, and you
will hold your bear with love and
willowy fingers. Your trees

will grow from cumulus to sticks
with structure, with roots, with winters and
in their fingers, beds of birds.

You will learn of ash die-back, oak
apples, mistletoe, ivy and
bark beetles burrowing elms to end.

You will wonder at nests, so spare
all feather and sticks you will ask:
how eggs, so fragile, were ever safe.

How trees bend and sometimes break
what roots look like after a storm
spread like a giant hand splayed

like the rays of the sun.
And what colour was the blackbird
in this nest?

2022 © Andie Davidson

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