THE TREE

With spreading boughs you shelter me
from sun and wind and rain
Through flood and drought you stand alone
and never once complain

Your fruits will feed the hungry birds
you've pollen for the bee
there's nothing else like you on Earth
the tall majestic tree

Through out your life the world may change
a dozen times or more
For I may live but eighty years
but you may live ten score

And in your spreading branches
how tenderly you hold
a nest of chicks who'll grow and die
while you are not yet old

In time you were a sapling
still reaching for the sky
but now you stand a giant
some fifty meters high

In your hollows sound asleep
a sugar glider rests
your body shelters many things
all snug within their nests

Beetles bugs and borers all
will call your trunk their home
and though you stand above all else
you're never quite alone

I gaze at you in wonder
and ponder on your life
you prosper in the good times
and hang on through the strife

In all your cloak of brown and green
I know I'll never see
a sight so rich and wonderful
as that in front of me.

(c) December 2000 Written in Adelaide, South Australia.

Fred Jacoby Park

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