My Daughter, Age Sixteen
(for Angie)
My daughter, age sixteen, bought me a tree
and walked from Ramsgate to Broadstairs
her Pre-Raphaelite face between its branches
bearing me a birthday.
And I wondered at her beauty, brave
to wear a coronet of leaves
through urban streets where anyone from school
might have seen her. And I remembered
that Christingel, when the candles nearly
burnt her hair and the way she entered
pre-school at the age of four, no tears, no looking back.
To open your front door and see
your daughter’s lovely face shining
through a sea of green, and all their limbs
still growing, was better than any birthday cake.
What a moment we shared, planting it.
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