Name Carved On A Tree Poem by William Barton

This is the tree where you carved your name
at the junction of three woodland pathways,
hoping to be part of its long living.

But what you missed was the child
teetering past on a shiny new bicycle;
The girl and boy walking shyly apart,
hesitating over untried pathways;
The old man, breathless, with a stick.

You never witnessed the breaking of buds in Spring,
The cool coat of summer leaves and birdsong,
The splintering agony of furious autumn gales,
and the bleak loneliness of bare winter branches.