Somewhere, not far inside the gates,
but not so far beyond the artificial pond,
its muddy cusps slimed with frog spawn,
I’d be little more than five years old
and struck by the lightning-split trunks,
the furred bark, the sheer age of trees.
Like that sliced-through giant Redwood
in the Natural History Museum
with rings picked-out marking dates
of human events, it wasn’t so much
our frailty they brought to mind
