My lockdown tree has been pollard,

Now I can no longer see her branches,

Waving at me and  swaying in the lockdown breeze.

She was a smile to me,

A location on the map,

from the window of my world.

A reassuring, smiling, waving friend.

My life has been punctuated by trees,

Sunblind I climbed as a child.

Believing that the tree belonged to me,

My ladder to the neighbour's gardens,

Sour figs dangled from those branches now dead.

All trees that I have known

that died will never be forgotten

by me and all her roots.

My lockdown friend

will bloom to life in the Spring,

With whispers on the rustling wind.

With spikey branches spouting

from her fisted stumps,

And they too will smile and wave,

And say we are here too

in lockdown with you.