Plant A New Tree Poem by Barry Middleton

plant a new tree
someday the old one
will fall in a storm

wherever you go
plant a new tree
for tomorrow's child

I look at my new tree
I may never sit
beneath its reassurance

over there the old tree
does not tell me
who planted it

the old tree and I
will be leaving soon
the new tree will grow

in fifty years
someone will sit here
in its cooling shade

he is yesterday's child
he has become the man
who plants the trees