From our bedroom window I can almost touch
the laburnum’s tresses of yellow blooms.
The tree was here before we moved in
fifty years ago. Most years it has fountained
flowers – which, from a distance, seem golden.
A quarter century is the likely span
of a laburnum. Though this tree is on
borrowed time bees congregate regardless.
Perhaps being featured in one of my poems
has encouraged its longevity:
‘…By our side gate the old laburnum – whose wood,
in time, may make a chanter or a flute –
is in bloom. I look up through its branches.
There is a little azure and smidgens
of green – and droplets, ringlets, links, chains
of cascading yellow, a torrent of gold….’
I am long beyond my allotted span
of the psalmist’s ‘three score years and ten’,
and take note of her/his admonition:
‘…if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labour and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away’.
I shall be good enough only for ashes
the wind might scatter. This tree, however,
might make music.
Note: the poem mentioned above is AN AFTERNOON IN MAY.
By David Selzer