The Trees, by Philip Larkin

Lent, Day 22

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

As Janet Morley comments on this poem, "Mortality is the condition under which we live our lives; yet that does not prevent us from embracing genuine hope."

And then she tells her reader to have a walk and look closely at some trees - so M, J and I went to a new part of Sutton Park and did just that. The last two lines spoke directly to me of my Mum's death - one generation of our family is now past, but we are about to begin afresh with another - and that is where we must now focus.