A FAVOURITE TREE
My favourite tree is long dead.
It is oak.
It has been made into a table.
For over thirty years it has been part of the family.
I remember putting my new born daughter, snug in her carry cot, on the table and lifting my two year old son on to it to examine his baby sister.
While the children were small the underneath of the table was a den, a cave, a house. The top of the table was a car, a ship, a plane.
I remember my small son sitting with his books on top of the table for three weeks to avoid the new puppy he was scared of.
The table was the focus for ludo, snakes and ladders, monopoly.
It was the study place for hours of homework, college work, university dissertations.
It is the heart of the house, the focal point for family meals, Christmas feasts, long weekend lunches.
Now the children have left home my husband and I take our turn at playing there – we spread out the jigsaws, the backgammon, the scrabble, the papers.
It was second-hand when we bought it
- highly polished and not a mark on it.
Now it is worn, stained, rough-smooth, holding all our memories.
It was once a proud, magnificent oak tree.
It is as wonderful dead as it was alive.
Joy Gale | BENEFITS OF AGEING – A SHORT POEM
It can be possible to be happy in one’s skin.
One stops agonising about each and every thing.
Day follows day it is enough to say.
Tomorrow will come and bring a new dawn.
For now this evening it is enough to stretch and yawn.
What can we do to change a thing?
Hair grows grey, waists are no longer thin.
But each day we meet and greet the future
not with resignation or dread
But we think to ourselves everything
must have been said or read.
Here we are mature, ample, no longer young
but in our way we are wise and still have fun.
Pauline Apperley
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